Maël
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Maël is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country. In Réunion it is the 31st most common given name. Recorded meaning: a male given name from Breton, equivalent to English Prince, from mael (“prince”).
- FRFrance≈1 in 3.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 194Kas Mal
- ALAlbania1 in 14K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Maël itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 275 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.4K (inferred from the name graph)
≈20,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Mael in FR France, ES Spain, CM Cameroon and Mal in US United States.
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)
a male given name from Breton, equivalent to English Prince, from mael (“prince”)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Maël 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #297 | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | 45K | Mael | 275 |
| US United States | — | 1,716as Mal | 1 in 194K | 1.2K | Mal | 266 |
| ES Spain | — | 1,402 | 1 in 36K | 1.4K | Mael | 20 |
| CM Cameroon | #988 | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Mael | 8 |
| BR Brazil | — | 644 | 1 in 329K | 644 | — | 3 |
| CH Switzerland | — | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 25K | 144 | Maël | 34 |
| AL Albania | — | 222 | 1 in 14K | 220 | — | — |
| RE Réunion | #31 | ≈30 est. | ≈1 in 26K | 40 | Maël | 13 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); FSO — Vornamen der Neugeborenen und Wohnbevölkerung; INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion). 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)
Maël is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, Breton prénom issu de mael « prince, chef »; fête/saint non indiqué dans l’OCR.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
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)
- Maëlb. 500FRBreton saint
- Maël Dewynterb. 1950FRFrench Guyanan mammalogist
- Maël Renouardb. 1979FRFrench writer and translator
- Maël Davan-Soulasb. 1979FRFrench actor
- Maël de Calanb. 1980FRFrench politician
- Maël Montévilb. 1984FRresearcher
- Maël Lépicierb. 1986CGfootballer
- Maël Rannoub. 1989FRFrench cartoonist, librarian, chronicler and editor
- Maël Lebrunb. 1991FRFrench basketball player (born 1991)
- Alemb. 1992FRnot in their usual nameFrench beatboxer
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 29 sources across 20 countries.
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
- What does the name Maël mean, and where does it come from?
- a male given name from Breton, equivalent to English Prince, from mael (“prince”) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Maël a male or female name?
- Maël 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.
- In which country does Maël have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 20 thousand people named Maël in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mael.
- How common is the name Maël?
- In Spain, the national register counted 1,402 people named Maël, about 1 in 36 thousand residents.
- How common is Maël compared with other names?
- In France, Maël is the 297th most common given name of 754,146 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Maël?
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/ma%C3%ABlThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Maël” — the 297th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.