Shell
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ka, def. st. kéi; also the scales of serpents
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ʃɛl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Shell is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Lesotho it is the 6th most common surname.
- USUnited States1 in 25K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 44K
- LSLesotho≈1 in 4.5K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 366 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.5K (inferred from the name graph)
13,369 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Lesotho, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
ka, def. st. kéi; also the scales of serpents. Shell of the poya, used in the Poro
Sources 1
- Vocabulary of the Mende Language
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Shell 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 | — | 13,369 | 1 in 25K | 13K | Shell | 366 |
| GH Ghana | #783 | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Shell | 6 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 44K | 856 | Shell | 118 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 60K | listed | Shell | 15 |
| LR Liberia | #49 | ≈950 est. | ≈1 in 5.4K | — | Shell | 1 |
| LS Lesotho | #6 | ≈440 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | — | Shell | 2 |
13,369 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral 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)
Shell is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from Shell (Worcestershire); first attested John Shette 1340 NIWo
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A hard external covering of an animal.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, v., ndole
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In cdo, Avaricious, stingy, mean, sordid, sparing ; to dislike, to part w\t]\u, to spare ； re<^*€stting^, asliJUB'
as a wordAn Alphabetic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Foochow Dialect
English: 1 Normally a short form of MICHELLE . 2 In some cases it may be a back-formation from SHELLEY (as if this contained the hypocoristic suffix -( e ) y ) or simply a shortened form of SHELLEY . Top
as a word
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)
- George W. Shellb. 1831USAmerican politician (1831-1899)
- Donald L. Shellb. 1924USAmerican computer scientist (1924–2015)
- Art Shellb. 1946USAmerican football player and coach
- Susan Shellb. 1948USAmerican philosopher
- Donnie Shellb. 1952USAmerican football player
- Suzanne Shellb. 1957American activist
- Tim Shellb. 1968USAmerican businessperson
- Brandon Shellb. 1992USAmerican football player
- Amy Shell-Gellaschb. 2000USMathematician
- Ray ShellUSAmerican actor
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 23 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 13K | #2,696 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 13K | #2,523 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 12K | #2,894 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 856 | #7,483 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- Where does the name Shell come from?
- ka, def. st. kéi; also the scales of serpents. Shell of the poya, used in the Poro Recorded by Vocabulary of the Mende Language.
- How do you pronounce Shell?
- A machine transcription gives /ʃɛl/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Shell mean?
- Recorded meaning: ka, def. st. kéi; also the scales of serpents.
- What are other forms of the name Shell?
- In the etymology graph, Scaglia is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Shell have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 13 thousand people named Shell, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shell.
- How common is the name Shell?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,369 people named Shell in 2010, about 1 in 25 thousand residents.
- How common is Shell compared with other names?
- In Lesotho, Shell is the 6th most common surname of 5,753 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Shell?
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/shellThe 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, “Shell” — the 6th most common surname in Lesotho. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.