Rowell
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) from the medieval personal name Rowell, a pet-form of Rowe; (ii) person from Rowell, Devon, ‘hill overgrown with vegetation’; (iii) a different form of Rothwell
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈɹoʊɪɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Rowell is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 17K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 17K
- USUnited States1 in 21K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 416 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
15,952 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Ghana, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) from the medieval personal name Rowell, a pet-form of Rowe; (ii) person from Rowell, Devon, ‘hill overgrown with vegetation’; (iii) a different form of Rothwell.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rowell 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 15,952 | 1 in 21K | 16K | Rowell | 416 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 17K | 3.9K | Rowell | 177 |
| GH Ghana | #789 | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Rowell | 12 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | Rowell | 7 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 60K | — | Rowell | 6 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Rowell | 101 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈440 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Rowell | 14 |
15,952 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register). 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Rowell is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, for ROTHWELL, or 'dweller by the rough hill' (OE rūh + hyll); first attested surname Rowehill in 1333 at Rowell, Devon (PN D 491)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, 2. habitation name from a place in Devon, so called from OE ruh rough, overgrown (cf. Rauch) + hyll Hill. 3. from Scots: Gael, ruadh red (ultimately cogn. with Read i, Roth i, Rudakov, and Rudd). 2. English (Norman): var. of Ray I. 3. French: cogn. of Ray i. a medieval given name, a dim. of Rowe 2. Royan see Ruane
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Jonathan H. Rowellb. 1833USAmerican politician
- Newton Rowellb. 1867CACanadian politician, religious leader, Supreme Court judge (1867–1941)
- Sydney Rowellb. 1894AUAustralian general (1894–1975)
- Galen Rowellb. 1940USAmerican wilderness photographer, mountaineer and author (1940–2002)
- Gary Rowellb. 1957GBEnglish footballer (1957-2025)
- Victoria Rowellb. 1959USAmerican actress (born 1959)
- Stephen Christopher Rowellb. 1964GBBritish historian
- Rosie Rowellb. 1965GBBritish actress
- Rainbow Rowellb. 1973USAmerican children's writer
- Jonny Rowellb. 1989GBfootballer (born 1989)
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 32 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 381 | #24,775 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1984 | 9 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1918 | 8 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1990 | 7 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 6 | #24,775 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1987 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1983 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1986 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1975 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1924 | 5 | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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
- What does the name Rowell mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) from the medieval personal name Rowell, a pet-form of Rowe; (ii) person from Rowell, Devon, ‘hill overgrown with vegetation’; (iii) a different form of Rothwell. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Rowell?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɹoʊɪɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Rowell have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 16 thousand people named Rowell, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rowell.
- How common is the name Rowell?
- In the United States, the national register counted 15,952 people named Rowell in 2010, about 1 in 21 thousand residents.
- How common is Rowell compared with other names?
- In Ghana, Rowell is the 789th most common surname of 36,883 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rowell?
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/rowellThe 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, “Rowell” — the 789th most common surname in Ghana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.