Merlé

surname · Latin script

Merlé is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 15,757 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2020. Recorded meaning: From Middle English merle, from Old French merle (French merle), from Latin merula (“blackbird”) (whence the directly borrowed Middle English merule, and compare the taxonomic name Turdus merula), fro.

  • DKDenmark1 in 2K(measured from records)
  • JMJamaica≈1 in 7.5Kfew records
  • SGSingapore≈1 in 8.3Kfew records

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)

15,757 people, 2020

Record sources
382 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 435 (inferred from the name graph)

Estonia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)Make your nomograph ✦

Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Merle in US United States, GB United Kingdom, DE Germany and 6 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)
Derivation of Merlé: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Merlé
  1. Middle Englishmerle(measured from records)
  2. Old FrenchmerleFrench merle(measured from records)
  3. Latinmerula“blackbird”(measured from records)
  4. Proto-Indo-European*h₂mes-“black“black, blackbird”(measured from records)

From Middle English merle, from Old French merle (French merle), from Latin merula (“blackbird”) (whence the directly borrowed Middle English merule, and compare the taxonomic name Turdus merula), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂mes- (“black, blackbird”). Compare Breton moualch (“ouzel”), Welsh mwyalch (“blackbird, thrush”). Distantly related to the synonymous ouzel.

Cited for this meaning 6

  • 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
  • A concise dictionary of first names
  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
  • Wiktionary

Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

(measured from records)

Merlé 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 Merlé is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—15,7571 in 21K10KMerle382
ZA South Africa—≈7,200 est.≈1 in 8.8K—Merle50
DE Germany—≈7,200 est.≈1 in 12K—Merle152
PH Philippines—≈6,900 est.≈1 in 17K—Merle52
GB United Kingdom—≈4,500 est.≈1 in 15K3Merle104
EE Estonia—≈3,200 est.≈1 in 4352.6KMerle34
DK Denmark—2,9061 in 2K2.9KMerle44
SG Singapore#700≈730 est.≈1 in 8.3K—Merle14
JM Jamaica#141≈380 est.≈1 in 7.5K—Merle4

15,757 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Statistics Estonia — Ees- ja perekonnanimed (Population 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)

Merlé is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Swahili given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, South Africa, Philippines, United Kingdom

    Languages: Swahili, Southern Sotho

    Also written Merle

  • Hindi given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India, United Kingdom, South Africa

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Merle

4 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.

Evidence

(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Merlé under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Merlé mean, and where does it come from?
From Middle English merle, from Old French merle (French merle), from Latin merula (“blackbird”) (whence the directly borrowed Middle English merule, and compare the taxonomic name Turdus merula), fro… Recorded by 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado and A concise dictionary of first names and 4 other sources.
Which countries have the most people named Merlé?
In the United States, the national register counted about 16 thousand people named Merlé, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled merle. After it come South Africa, Germany, Philippines and United Kingdom; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Merlé?
In the United States, the national register counted 15,757 people named Merlé in 2020, about 1 in 21 thousand residents.
How common is Merlé compared with other names?
In Jamaica, Merlé is the 141st most common given name of 21,568 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Merlé?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/merl%C3%A9

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, “Merlé” — ranked 1847th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2020). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Merlé parses inside a full name →