Capella

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: A bright double star in the constellation Auriga; Alpha (α) Aurigae

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

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

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

rarermore common
  • ESSpain1 in 26K(measured from records)
  • VEVenezuela≈1 in 30K
  • ARArgentina1 in 61K

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)

1,958 people

Sources
125 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 26K (inferred from the name graph)

Spain

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Pre-reform spelling (used until 1943 in Brazil and 1911 in Portugal) of capela.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.

How Capella is read(measured from records)

Capella is one spelling over 4 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.

  • Spanish43%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Capella in Spanish.

  • English32%

    A bright double star in the constellation Auriga; Alpha (α) Aurigae.

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

    star

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • Portuguese13%

    Pre-reform spelling (used until 1943 in Brazil and 1911 in Portugal) of capela.

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

  • French5.1%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Capella in French.

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Capella 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 Capella is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ES Spain1,9581 in 26K2KCapella105
BR Brazil1,5051 in 141K1.5KCapella84
VE Venezuela≈960 est.≈1 in 30K—Capella17
US United States9551 in 348K981Capella104
AR Argentina7441 in 61K744Capella47
AO Angola≈480 est.≈1 in 67K—Capella3
UY Uruguay431 in 79K43Capella8

1,958 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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Capella is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname7 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, Dutch

    Also written Capellà, Capellã, Capellá

  • Catalan surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Andorra

    Also written Capellà

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Capellà, Capellá

  • Indonesian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Spain, United States

    Also written Capellá

  • Lao surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, Thailand

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written Kapella, คาเปลล่า, คาเพลล่า, Capellá, คาเพลลา

44 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)

Capella 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 Italian, var. dialetal de Cappella.

    as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

  • In Latin, A masculine cognomen — famously held by

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

  • In Catalan, chapel

    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)

1400160018002000Galeazzo Flavio Capella, b. 1487Andrés Capella, b. 1529Francesco Capella, b. 1711José Mascaró y Capella, b. 1838Ramon Maria Riudor Capella, b. 1867Jacinto Capella, b. 1880Joan Capella, b. 1927Manuel Capella, b. 1946Ester Capella i Farré, b. 1963Tom Capella, b. 1965

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 Capella,Dear Capella, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Capella,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 28 sources across 17 countries.

Official registers attesting Capella
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—2K#2,458
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—2K#2,458
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—1.5K#6,322
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020981#26,238
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010955#25,793
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000887#25,991
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—744—
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—43—
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
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • 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

Where does the name Capella come from?
Pre-reform spelling (used until 1943 in Brazil and 1911 in Portugal) of capela. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Capella?
A machine transcription gives /kapeʎa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What does the name Capella mean?
In English, A bright double star in the constellation Auriga; Alpha (α) Aurigae.
In which country does Capella have the most bearers?
In Spain, the national register counted about 2.0 thousand people named Capella, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled capella.
Where is Capella most common?
Capella is densest in Spain, where the national register counts about 1 in 26 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Capella?
In Spain, the national register counted 1,958 people named Capella, about 1 in 26 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Capella?

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

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, “Capella”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Capella parses inside a full name →