Brill
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: (i) person from Brill in northwestern Germany or the Netherlands ('wet lowlands'); (ii) person from Brill, Buckinghamshire ('Bre hill', from a Celtic word)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/bɹɪl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Brill is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- DEGermany
- USUnited States
- GBUnited Kingdom
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.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) person from Brill in northwestern Germany or the Netherlands ('wet lowlands'); (ii) person from Brill, Buckinghamshire ('Bre hill', from a Celtic word).
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Brill is read(measured from records)
Brill is one spelling over 2 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.
- English80%
(i) person from Brill in northwestern Germany or the Netherlands ('wet lowlands'); (ii) person from Brill, Buckinghamshire ('Bre hill', from a Celtic word).
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
A type of flatfish, Scophthalmus rhombus.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
E.J., Dutch publishing co.
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- German7.0%
from dialect word for fish elritze; also from Brit- or place names
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Toponymischer Familienname; im Text als Flurnamen-Variante von Brühl genannt, auch als mögliche Entrundung. Konzentriert im Saarland. Belegt mit 2166 Tokens.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Brill is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Trieste
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
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)
- Alexander von Brillb. 1842DEGerman mathematician (1842–1935)
- Nathan Edwin Brillb. 1860USAmerican physician (1860–1925)
- Abraham Arden Brillb. 1874USAmerican psychiatrist & psychoanalyst (1874–1948)
- Yvonne Brillb. 1924CACanadian scientist (1924-2013)
- Charlie Brillb. 1938USAmerican actor, comedian and voice artist
- Fran Brillb. 1946USAmerican actress
- Steven Brillb. 1950USAmerican writer, publisher and entrepreneur
- Debbie Brillb. 1953CACanadian high jumper
- Steven Brillb. 1962USAmerican film director, screenwriter, producer and actor
- Will Brillb. 1986USAmerican 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 27 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9.2K | #3,841 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 9.1K | #3,598 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.4K | #4,095 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 295 | #26,791 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 80 | #6,842 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 70 | #20,615 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 70 | #24,720 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 64 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 64 | #41,535 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 53 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 53 | #48,032 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 45 | #48,266 |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Brill mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) person from Brill in northwestern Germany or the Netherlands ('wet lowlands'); (ii) person from Brill, Buckinghamshire ('Bre hill', from a Celtic word). Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Brill?
- A machine transcription gives /bɹɪl/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Brill have the most bearers?
- Brill is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Brill?
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/brillThe 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, “Brill”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.