Cele

surname · Latin script

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

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

Cele is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country, where it is the 65th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 706(inferred from the name graph)
  • SZEswatini≈1 in 5.8K
  • BWBotswana≈1 in 51K

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.

South Africa (inferred from the name graph)

≈80,000 people, est.

Sources
123 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 706 (inferred from the name graph)

South Africa, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin

No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cele 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 Cele is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ZA South Africa#65≈80,000 est.≈1 in 706—Cele69
NG Nigeria—≈480 est.≈1 in 448K—Cele16
SZ Eswatini—≈190 est.≈1 in 5.8K2—2
BR Brazil—1751 in 1.2M175—1
AR Argentina—1471 in 309K147—1
BW Botswana—≈46 est.≈1 in 51Klisted—1

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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Eswatini EBC 2023 Secondary Elections candidate ballots. 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)

Cele is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Cëlë, Čelê, Céle, Çele, Celé

  • Turkish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, South Africa, Italy, Nigeria

    Also written Çele

49 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)

Cele is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In cdo, every article or thing, frequently, always, ( O-dék-d6), every year, ( niéng-niéng), every day, each day

    as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect

  • In Zulu, Zulu clan name; praises include Ndosi, Magaya, Vico.

    as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames

  • In Romanian, feminine plural of cel (nominative and accusative)

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

  • In Czech, masculine singular present transgressive of celit

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

  • In Polish, nominative/accusative/vocative plural of cel

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

  • In ang, alternative form of ċiele

    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)

1940196019802000Henry Cele, b. 1949Bheki Cele, b. 1952Ntando Cele, b. 1980Siboniso Cele, b. 1985Thabo Cele, b. 1997Samkelo Cele, b. 1997

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)

FormalDear Cele,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 17 sources across 11 countries.

Official registers attesting Cele
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—175#41,015
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—147—
SZ EswatiniEswatini EBC 2023 Secondary Elections candidate ballots20232#49

Reference works 2

  • 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

How do you pronounce Cele?
A machine transcription gives /ˈsiɫ/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Cele have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 80 thousand people named Cele in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cele.
How common is the name Cele?
In Brazil, the national register counted 175 people named Cele, about 1 in 1.2 million residents.
How common is Cele compared with other names?
In South Africa, Cele is the 65th most common surname of 285,788 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Cele?

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

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, “Cele” — the 65th most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cele parses inside a full name →