Belén

given name · Latin script

Meaning: Hebrew Beth-lehem, 'house of bread'; by extension, nativity scene and a given name

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/belen/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Belén is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country. In Uruguay it is the 13th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • ESSpain1 in 1.5K(measured from records)
  • CLChile≈1 in 1.5K
  • UYUruguay≈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). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Philippines (inferred from the name graph)

≈37,000 people, est.

#634 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

Sources
345 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)

Spain

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Belen in AR Argentina, ES Spain, CL Chile 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)

Hebrew Beth-lehem, 'house of bread'; by extension, nativity scene and a given name

Sources 1

  • Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios

Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Belén 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.

Where Belén is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
PH Philippines#516≈37,000 est.≈1 in 2.9KlistedBelen101
ES Spain#8034,0391 in 1.5K34KBelen217
US United States—13,3971 in 25K13KBelen345
AR Argentina#68≈13,000 est.≈1 in 3.5K4.5KBelen151
CL Chile#69≈12,000 est.≈1 in 1.5K247Belen112
BO Bolivia—≈4,000 est.≈1 in 2.9K—Belen52
UY Uruguay#13≈2,200 est.≈1 in 1.5K—Belen63

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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; the ph-wiktionary-names 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Belén is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Bélèn, Belen, Belèn, Bélen

  • Lao given name24 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, Chile, Peru, Spain

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written Belen, Belèn, Bélén, Bëlën, Bélen

  • Ukrainian surname14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ukraine, Spain, Peru, Russia

    Languages: Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian

    Also written Белень, Belen, Белен, Baleni, Belèn

  • French given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Spain, United States, Peru

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Belen

44 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Belén is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Spanish, Bethlehem (a city in Palestine)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Spanish: chosen in commemoration of Jesus's birthplace at Bethlehem in Judea, the Spanish form of which is Belén . The placename means ‘house of bread’ in Hebrew.

    as a word

  • In Hungarian, superessive of bele

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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)

1960197019801990Belén Rodríguez Palomino, b. 1962Belén Gopegui, b. 1963Belén Rueda, b. 1965Belén López, b. 1970Belén Atienza Azcona, b. 1970Belén Fabra, b. 1977Belén Blanco, b. 1977Belén Cuesta, b. 1984Belén Rodríguez, b. 1984Belén Funes, b. 1984

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)

InformalHola Belén,Hi Belén, (English)

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 21 sources across 14 countries.

Official registers attesting Belén
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
CL ChileSRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021)20041.2K—
CL ChileSRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021)20031.1K—
CL ChileSRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021)20101.1K—
CL ChileSRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021)20091.1K—
CL ChileSRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021)20001K—
CL ChileSRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021)19991K—
CL ChileSRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021)20071K—
CL ChileSRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021)2008991—
CL ChileSRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021)2012971—
CL ChileSRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021)2011963—
CL ChileSRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021)2001936—
CL ChileSRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021)1998904—

Reference works 2

  • Wikipedia given-name 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

How do you pronounce Belén?
A machine transcription gives /belen/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What does the name Belén mean, and where does it come from?
Hebrew Beth-lehem, 'house of bread'; by extension, nativity scene and a given name Recorded by Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios.
In which country does Belén have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 37 thousand people named Belén in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled belen.
Where is Belén most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Belén is densest in Spain — about 1 in 1.5 thousand people — even though Philippines holds more of our records for it.
Is Belén a male or female name?
Belén is a female 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.
How common is the name Belén?
In Spain, the national register counted 34,039 people named Belén, about 1 in 1.5 thousand residents.
How common is Belén compared with other names?
In the Philippines, Belén is the 516th most common given name of 486,299 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Belén?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bel%C3%A9n

The 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, “Belén” — the 516th most common given name in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Belén parses inside a full name →