Candela
given name · Latin script
Meaning: candle
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Candela is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country.
- UYUruguay1 in 1.3K(measured from records)
- ARArgentina≈1 in 1.4K
- ESSpain1 in 1.8K
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.
- Argentina (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 240 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈32,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
candle
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Candela 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | #308 | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | 995 | Candela | 114 |
| ES Spain | #652 | 28,070 | 1 in 1.8K | 28K | Candela | 143 |
| UY Uruguay | #193 | 2,626 | 1 in 1.3K | 2.6K | Candela | 21 |
| PY Paraguay | — | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Candela | 11 |
| US United States | — | 245 | 1 in 1.4M | 2.3K | Candela | 240 |
| CL Chile | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 156K | 1 | Candela | 26 |
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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE Uruguay — Nombres más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021). 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)
Candela 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 Italian, oriundo da cidade meridional homônima; o nome remete a antigo termo local para tipo de choupo ou a fabricante de velas
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In English, In the International System of Units, the base unit of luminous intensity; the luminous intensity, in a given direction, of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540 × 10¹² hertz and that has a radiant intensity in that direction of 1/683 watt per steradian. Symbol: cd
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, A light made of wax or tallow; tallow candle or taper.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Portuguese, candela (unit of measurement of luminous intensity)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In ang, nominative/accusative/genitive plural of candel
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)
- Candela Fernándezb. 1950ESSpanish actress
- Candela Ferrob. 1973USAmerican television personality
- Candela Serratb. 1986ESSpanish actress and model
- Candela Márquezb. 1988ESSpanish actress
- Candela Vetranob. 1991ARArgentine actress
- Candela Antón de Vezb. 1994ESCatalan actress
- Candela Andújarb. 2000ESSpanish association football player
- Candela Gentinettab. 2001ARArgentinian basketball player
- Candela Saittab. 2003ARArgentine actress
- Candela Belén Francisco Guecamburub. 2006ARArgentine chess player
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 48 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 5.1K | #1,041 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 5.1K | #1,041 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.3K | #13,084 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.3K | #12,754 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.1K | #13,181 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 995 | — |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 68 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Candela mean, and where does it come from?
- candle Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Candela have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 32 thousand people named Candela in Argentina, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled candela.
- Where is Candela most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Candela is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 1.3 thousand people — even though Argentina holds more of our records for it.
- Is Candela a male or female name?
- Candela is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Candela?
- In the etymology graph, Cande and Candid are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Candelaria.
- How common is the name Candela?
- In Spain, the national register counted 28,070 people named Candela, about 1 in 1.8 thousand residents.
- How common is Candela compared with other names?
- In Argentina, Candela is the 308th most common given name of 119,825 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Candela?
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/candelaThe 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, “Candela” — the 308th most common given name in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.