Nathaniel
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From the Biblical Hebrew personal name meaning ‘given by God’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/nəθænjəl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nathaniel is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Ghana it is the 41st most common given name.
- GHGhana≈1 in 1.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 1.8K
- NGNigeria≈1 in 2.9K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 548 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈220,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ghana, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From the Biblical Hebrew personal name meaning ‘given by God’. This was borne by a minor prophet in the Bible (2 Samuel 7:2). It is found as both a Jewish and Gentile surname in Europe. In South India it is used as a given name among Christians, and in the U.S. it has come to be used as a family name among South Indian Christians.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nathaniel counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈220,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.4K | — | Nathaniel | 28 |
| US United States | #426 | 189,977 | 1 in 1.8K | 190K | Nathaniel | 548 |
| NG Nigeria | #598 | ≈73,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | — | Nathaniel | 101 |
| PH Philippines | #788 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | — | Nathaniel | 137 |
| GH Ghana | #41 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Nathaniel | 77 |
| GB United Kingdom | #531 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.8K | — | Nathaniel | 235 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Nathaniel Palmerb. 1799USAmerican explorer (1799–1877)
- Nathaniel Hawthorneb. 1804USAmerican author (1804–1864)
- Nat King Coleb. 1919USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer and jazz pianist (1919–1965)
- Jim Brownb. 1936USnot in their usual nameAmerican football player and actor (1936–2023)
- Nathaniel Leesb. 1952NZNew Zealand actor
- Nathaniel Parkerb. 1962GBEnglish actor (born 1962)
- Ralph Fiennesb. 1962GBnot in their usual nameEnglish actor, director and producer (born 1962)
- Aloe Blaccb. 1979USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer and rapper
- Jacob Elordib. 1997AUnot in their usual nameAustralian actor (born 1997)
- Frankie Jonasb. 2000USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 112 sources across 60 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 190K | #292 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 2.6K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 352 | #292 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Nathaniel come from?
- From the Biblical Hebrew personal name meaning ‘given by God’. This was borne by a minor prophet in the Bible (2 Samuel 7:2). It is found as both a Jewish and Gentile surname in Europe. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- Is Nathaniel a male or female name?
- Nathaniel is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Nathaniel mean?
- Recorded meaning: From the Biblical Hebrew personal name meaning ‘given by God’.
- What are other forms of the name Nathaniel?
- In the etymology graph, Nathan, Natanael and Nathanael are forms of the same name in other languages; Nate is a recorded short or pet form.
- How common is the name Nathaniel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 189,977 people named Nathaniel in 2020, about 1 in 1.8 thousand residents.
- How common is Nathaniel compared with other names?
- In Ghana, Nathaniel is the 41st most common given name of 14,081 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Nathaniel have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 218 thousand people named Nathaniel in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nathaniel.
- How do you pronounce Nathaniel?
- A machine transcription gives /nəθænjəl/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Nathaniel?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/nathanielThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Nathaniel” — the 41st most common given name in Ghana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.