Capel
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) ‘person living by or employed in a chapel’; (ii) ‘person from Capel’, various places in southern England (‘place with a chapel’)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kapəl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Capel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country.
- ESSpain1 in 19K(measured from records)
- FRFrance≈1 in 36K
- BRBrazil1 in 156K
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)
- Sources
- 190 (measured from records)
- 1 in 19K (inferred from the name graph)
2,701 people
Highest-authority source
Spain
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) ‘person living by or employed in a chapel’; (ii) ‘person from Capel’, various places in southern England (‘place with a chapel’)
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)
Capel 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | 2,701 | 1 in 19K | 2.7K | Capel | 108 |
| FR France | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 36K | 229 | Capel | 190 |
| US United States | 1,657 | 1 in 201K | 1.7K | Capel | 66 |
| BR Brazil | 1,353 | 1 in 156K | 1.4K | Capel | 66 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈850 est. | ≈1 in 77K | — | Capel | 38 |
| NL Netherlands | 341 | 1 in 51K | 341 | Capel | 11 |
| UY Uruguay | 121 | 1 in 28K | 121 | Capel | 10 |
2,701 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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)
Capel 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 Capel or Capel Le Ferne (Kent), Capel St Andrew or St Mary (Suffolk), Capel (Surrey), or How/King’s Caple (Hereford), or residence/service at a chapel; first attested Jacob de Capel 1193 P (He)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Alternative spelling of caple (horse)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, redução dialetal setentrional de Capello.
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In Irish, When this name appears in the same part of the country as Caples or Caplice it is a synonym thereof; elsewhere it is a variant of Keppel, an English name found in Co. Carlow
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
In map-pro, a patch; to patch
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)
- Edward Capelb. 1770GBEnglish soldier and sportsman (1770-1855)
- Thomas Bladen Capelb. 1776GBBritish military leader (1776-1853)
- Tommy Capelb. 1922GBBritish footballer (1922-2009)
- Audrey Capel Dorayb. 1931CACanadian painter (born 1931)
- Francisco Capelb. 1933ESSpanish basketball player (1933-2022)
- Horacio Capel Sáezb. 1941ESSpanish geographer
- Mike Capelb. 1961USAmerican baseball player
- Princessab. 1975ESnot in their usual nameSpanish singer
- Jason Capelb. 1980USAmerican basketball player-coach
- Diego Capelb. 1988ESSpanish footballer
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 25 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 2.7K | #1,889 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 2.7K | #1,889 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.7K | #17,120 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.4K | #7,004 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.3K | #19,048 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.3K | #20,689 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 341 | #5,964 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 319 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 300 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 259 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 238 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 229 | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name 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
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 Capel mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) ‘person living by or employed in a chapel’; (ii) ‘person from Capel’, various places in southern England (‘place with a chapel’) Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Capel?
- A machine transcription gives /kapəl/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Capel have the most bearers?
- In Spain, the national register counted about 2.7 thousand people named Capel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled capel.
- Where is Capel most common?
- Capel is densest in Spain, where the national register counts about 1 in 19 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Capel?
- In Spain, the national register counted 2,701 people named Capel, about 1 in 19 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Capel?
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/capelThe 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, “Capel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.