Wëlls
surname · Latin script
Wëlls is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 176,230 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010. Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): widespread, esp. SE. locative name from Wells next the Sea (Norfolk) or Wells (Somerset), or topographic name from residence near a group of springs (Old English wella). Wëlls is also written ওযেলস in Bengali.
- GDGrenada1 in 1.2K(measured from records)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 1.4K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.5K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #509 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 582 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)
176,230 people, 2010
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Grenada
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Wëlls in other scripts: Bengali
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Wells in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 4 more.
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)Main GB Location (1881): widespread, esp. SE. locative name from Wells next the Sea (Norfolk) or Wells (Somerset), or topographic name from residence near a group of springs (Old English wella). The singular with a preposition, atte, del, de la Welle, is very common in medieval sources and survives in Attwell ‘dweller by a spring or stream’, but the form Well has been almost completely absorbed by Wells.
Cited for this meaning 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Wëlls is found
(measured from records)Wëlls 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 | #128 | 176,230 | 1 in 1.9K | 176K | Wells | 582 |
| GB United Kingdom | #128 | ≈45,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 43K | Wells | 307 |
| CA Canada | #141 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | 19 | Wells | 240 |
| AU Australia | #153 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Wells | 229 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Wells | 72 |
| NZ New Zealand | #112 | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Wells | 142 |
| IE Ireland | #190 | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Wells | 63 |
| GD Grenada | — | 93 | 1 in 1.2K | 93 | — | 8 |
176,230 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); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025. 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).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Wëlls mean, and where does it come from?
- Main GB Location (1881): widespread, esp. SE. locative name from Wells next the Sea (Norfolk) or Wells (Somerset), or topographic name from residence near a group of springs (Old English wella). Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary and 1 other source.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Wëlls?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 176 thousand people named Wëlls, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wells. After it come United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and South Africa; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Wëlls most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Wëlls is densest in Grenada — about 1 in 1.2 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Wëlls?
- In the United States, the national register counted 176,230 people named Wëlls in 2010, about 1 in 1.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Wëlls compared with other names?
- In the United States, Wëlls is the 128th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wëlls?
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/w%C3%ABllsThe 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, “Wëlls” — ranked 131st in the United States (Census Bureau, 2010). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.