Neill
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Neill is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In the Philippines it is the 90th most common given name. Recorded meaning: shortened form of McNeil and O’Neil.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 34K(inferred from the name graph)
- SESweden1 in 1.1Kas Noel
- NLNetherlands1 in 3.4Kas Noëlle
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 Neill 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 522 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 34K (inferred from the name graph)
61,698 named Noel, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
South Africa, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Noel in US United States, PH Philippines, SE Sweden and 1 more and Noelle in FR France, NL Netherlands, AL Albania.
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)
shortened form of McNeil and O’Neil.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Neill 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 | #529 | 61,698as Noel | 1 in 5.4K | 49K | Noel | 522 |
| HU Hungary | — | 16,169as Noel | 1 in 604 | 16K | — | 1 |
| BR Brazil | — | 15,301as Noel | 1 in 14K | 19K | Neill | 24 |
| FR France | #434 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.9K | 52K | Noelle | 272 |
| SE Sweden | #613 | 8,880as Noel | 1 in 1.1K | 8.9K | Noel | 69 |
| FI Finland | — | 5,184as Noel | 1 in 1.1K | 5.5K | — | 16 |
| NL Netherlands | #784 | 5,146as Noëlle | 1 in 3.4K | 5.1K | Noelle | 67 |
| AL Albania | — | 3,269as Noel | 1 in 941 | 3.2K | Noelle | 3 |
| PH Philippines | #90 | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 60K | — | Noel | 163 |
| ZA South Africa | #788 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | Noel | 92 |
61,698 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; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Nyilvántartó — Top-100 given names in population (2020–2025); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- James Neillb. 1860USactor (1860-1931)
- Richard Neillb. 1875USAmerican actor and screenwriter (1875-1970)
- John R. Neillb. 1877US1877-1943; magazine and children's book illustrator
- Alexander Sutherland Neillb. 1883GBScottish educator and theorist (1883-1973)
- Roy William Neillb. 1887IEIrish-American film director (1887–1946)
- Noel Neillb. 1920USAmerican actress (1920-2016)
- Terry Neillb. 1942GBNorthern Irish football player and manager (1942–2022)
- Ve Neillb. 1951USMakeup artist
- Lucas Neillb. 1978AUAustralian association football player
- Thomas Neillb. 2002AUAustralian swimmer
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 41 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9.4K | #3,768 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.9K | #3,651 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.6K | #3,997 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.3K | #10,046 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 67 | #5,621 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 55 | #11,193 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1950 | 36 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1975 | 34 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1971 | 33 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1947 | 33 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1957 | 32 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1952 | 32 | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname 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 Neill mean, and where does it come from?
- shortened form of McNeil and O’Neil. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Neill have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 62 thousand people named Noel, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Neill?
- In the United States, the national register counted 61,698 people named Noel in 2020, about 1 in 5.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Neill compared with other names?
- In the United States, Neill is the 529th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Neill?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/neillThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Neill” — the 529th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.