Meles
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Athenian loved by Timagoras
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/mɛəɫz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Meles is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Ethiopia than in any other country.
- ETEthiopia≈1 in 5.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- NONorway1 in 61K
- SESweden1 in 82K
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.
- Ethiopia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 87 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈21,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ethiopia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Athenian loved by Timagoras
Sources 1
- Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Meles 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ET Ethiopia | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | — | Meles | 6 |
| BR Brazil | 374 | 1 in 566K | 374 | — | — |
| IT Italy | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 214K | listed | Meles | 10 |
| US United States | 172 | 1 in 1.9M | 275 | Meles | 87 |
| SE Sweden | 124 | 1 in 82K | 124 | Meles | 5 |
| CH Switzerland | 92 | 1 in 91K | 92 | Meles | 6 |
| NO Norway | 90 | 1 in 61K | 90 | — | 6 |
| HR Croatia | 36 | 1 in 117K | 36 | — | — |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); the xinhua-italian-manual 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)
Meles is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Latin, marten; badger
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Galician, plural of mel
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Breton, zostères
as a wordDeshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)
In Latvian, Sermuļu dzimtas ģints
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)
- Luciana Melesb. 1951ITItalian sportwoman
- Helen Melesb. 2000EREritrean singer and actress
- Hagazi Gebre MelesETresearcher
- Giovanni A. MelesCHPh.D. ETH Zürich 2011
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 25 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 374 | #21,999 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 275 | #75,616 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 172 | #104,156 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 124 | #6,083 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 114 | #135,837 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 92 | #11,837 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 90 | #16,625 |
| IT Italy | 意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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
- What does the name Meles mean, and where does it come from?
- Athenian loved by Timagoras Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
- How do you pronounce Meles?
- A machine transcription gives /mɛəɫz/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Meles have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 21 thousand people named Meles in Ethiopia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled meles.
- How common is the name Meles?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 374 people named Meles, about 1 in 566 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Meles?
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/melesThe 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, “Meles”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.