Sole

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: (1) from OE sol 'mud, wallowing place'; from a miry place, as at Soles, Kent; first attested William de la Sole 1207 Cur (Sx). (2) from OFr sol 'sole, lonely'; first attested Walter Sole 1203 Cur (Nf)

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/sole/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Sole is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • ESSpain1 in 4.4K(measured from records)
  • ITItaly≈1 in 14K
  • ARArgentina1 in 32K

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.

Spain (measured from records)

11,457 people

Sources
147 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 4.4K (inferred from the name graph)

Spain

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Solé in FR France.

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 Sole: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Sole
  1. OEsol(measured from records)
  2. OFrsol(measured from records)

(1) from OE sol 'mud, wallowing place'; from a miry place, as at Soles, Kent; first attested William de la Sole 1207 Cur (Sx). (2) from OFr sol 'sole, lonely'; first attested Walter Sole 1203 Cur (Nf)

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.

How Sole is read(measured from records)

Sole is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • Spanish46%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Sole in Spanish.

  • English28%

    (1) from OE sol 'mud, wallowing place'; from a miry place, as at Soles, Kent; first attested William de la Sole 1207 Cur (Sx). (2) from OFr sol 'sole, lonely'; first attested Walter Sole 1203 Cur (Nf)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

    Only.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • French7.1%

    sole (fish)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Sole 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 Sole is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ES Spain#37811,4571 in 4.4K11KSole147
IT Italy—≈4,300 est.≈1 in 14K1KSole99
US United States—1,5111 in 220K1.6KSole111
AR Argentina—1,4361 in 32K1.4KSole54
FR France—≈1,100 est.≈1 in 61K201Solé81
UY Uruguay—4241 in 8K424Sole23
NO Norway—1321 in 41K132Sole2

11,457 people counted by INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)

Sole is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname23 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Australia

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Solé, Soele, Sole', Solè, Söle

  • Hindi surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Spain, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Solé

  • a separate name6 spellings in the group

    Also written Solé, Solë, Solè, Šole, Sóle

  • Indonesian surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Spain, Malaysia, United States

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Solé, Sólé, Sõlé

  • Finnish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, Spain, United States, Italy

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Solé, Sõle

  • Lao surname11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, Spain, United States, Thailand

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written Solé, Solay, โซเล่ย์, Solea, โซเลย

52 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Sole is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In men, and v., noise, sound, shout; to sing loudly, to shout over

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

  • In men, tar, the odour of fish and other water animals

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

  • In Czech, masculine singular present transgressive of solit

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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)

1850190019502000Rafael Bardem, b. 1889Jordi Solé Tura, b. 1930Alfred Sole, b. 1943Joan Massagué Solé, b. 1953Albert Solé i Bruset, b. 1962Jo Sol, b. 1968Bernat Solé i Barril, b. 1975Sebastian Solé, b. 1991Ferrán Solé, b. 1992Bad Gyal, b. 1997

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)

FormalEstimado/a Sole,Dear Sole, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Sole,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 59 sources across 31 countries.

Official registers attesting Sole
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—11K#487
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—11K#487
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.6K#17,556
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.5K#18,337
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.4K#17,835
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—1.4K—
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—424—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1991201—
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—132#11,819
IT Italy意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual)———

Reference works 6

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
  • 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 Sole mean, and where does it come from?
(1) from OE sol 'mud, wallowing place'; from a miry place, as at Soles, Kent; first attested William de la Sole 1207 Cur (Sx). (2) from OFr sol 'sole, lonely'; first attested Walter Sole 1203 Cur (Nf) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
How do you pronounce Sole?
A machine transcription gives /sole/ (IPA) for Spanish.
In which country does Sole have the most bearers?
In Spain, the national register counted about 11 thousand people named Sole, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sole.
Where is Sole most common?
Sole is densest in Spain, where the national register counts about 1 in 4.4 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Sole?
In Spain, the national register counted 11,457 people named Sole, about 1 in 4.4 thousand residents.
How common is Sole compared with other names?
In Spain, Sole is the 378th most common surname of 395,154 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Sole?

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

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, “Sole” — the 378th most common surname in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Sole parses inside a full name →