Brazil

loc · Latin script

Meaning: from Irish Gaelic O Breasail, descendant of Breasai, a nickname meaning ‘strife’

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Brazil is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States
  • AUAustralia
  • CACanada

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
337 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

BrazilLatin(measured from records)
ΒραζιλGreek(measured from records)

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)

from Irish Gaelic O Breasail, descendant of Breasai, a nickname meaning ‘strife’

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Brazil counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where Brazil is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—5.3KBrazil337
AU Australia——Brazil85
GB United Kingdom—listedBrazil123
CA Canada——Brazil86
NL Netherlands—59Brazil11
BR Brazil—3.7KBrazil3

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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). 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)

Brazil is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Portuguese name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Brazìl

  • Hindi name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India

    Also written Bràzìl

  • Arabic name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia

    Also written Brãžil, Brâzîl

51 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)

Brazil 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.

  • cendant of BreasaV, a byname meaning ‘Strife’. The accent is on the first syllable. Vars.: O’Breen, O’Brean; O’Bruen; Brewin (Liverpool). Vars.: Brassill, (O’)Breassell. Breeze i. English: nickname for an irritating person, from ME breeze gadfly (OE breosa). 2. Welsh: patr. from Rhys. Dims.: (O’)Breslane, Breslin (Gael. 6 Breisle(a)in). Var.: Breese. Breach see Brack

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • Ger. breit Broad. dant of Breasal’, a byname meaning ‘Strife’. The accent is on the first syllable. Var.: Breitmann. Vars.: Brassill, (O’)Breassell. Dims.: (O’)Breslane, Breslin (Gael. O Breisle(a)in).

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

  • In Portuguese, Pre-reform spelling (used until 1943 in Brazil and 1911 in Portugal) of Brasil.

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

  • In English, republic, S. America

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In Irish, Irish name anglicised by Basil.

    as a nameIrish first names

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)

1850190019502000Vital Brazil, b. 1865Angela Brazil, b. 1868Joe Brazil, b. 1927Harold Brazil, b. 1947Scott Brazil, b. 1955Alan Brazil, b. 1959Gary Brazil, b. 1962Derek Brazil, b. 1968Karl Brazil, b. 1977Ellie Brazil, b. 1999

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 27 sources across 16 countries.

Official registers attesting Brazil
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020105.3K#6,373
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020005.1K#6,225
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020205K#6,491
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—3.7K#2,866
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)200759#27,814
GB United KingdomA Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988)———
US United Stateswru 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

What does the name Brazil mean, and where does it come from?
from Irish Gaelic O Breasail, descendant of Breasai, a nickname meaning ‘strife’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Brazil have the most bearers?
Brazil is most frequently recorded in the United States, where it is most often spelled brazil.

What do you want to know about Brazil?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Brazil”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Brazil parses inside a full name →