Del
given name · Latin script
Meaning: British colloquial pet form of Derek, with alteration of the exposed -r of the short form to -] (compare pSal and pTel)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/del/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Del is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country, where it is the 9th most common given name.
- ARArgentina≈1 in 10K(inferred from the name graph)
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 12K
- COColombia≈1 in 18K
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)
- #68 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 449 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,300 people, est.
of 15M given names
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
British colloquial pet form of Derek, with alteration of the exposed -r of the short form to -] (compare pSal and pTel). Delia ° From a classical Greek epithet of the goddess Artemis, referring to her birth on the island of Delos (compare }Cynthia). It was taken up by the pastoral poets of the 17th century, and has been moderately popular ever since.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Del 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 | #9 | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Del | 172 |
| US United States | — | 3,977 | 1 in 84K | 3.4K | Del | 449 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | — | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 28K | — | Del | 5 |
| SE Sweden | — | 2,877 | 1 in 3.5K | 2.9K | — | 54 |
| CO Colombia | #100 | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Del | 178 |
| VE Venezuela | #3 | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Del | 95 |
| PY Paraguay | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | — | Del | 53 |
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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)
Del 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 Spanish, of the, from the (+ a masculine noun in singular).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Del kan ursprungligen vara en engelsk smekform till mansnamnet Derek. Del kan också felaktigt ha kommit att registreras som ett förnamn, då det även uppträder som del av sammansatta namn, t.ex. i efternamnet Del Pilar och i det sammansatta förnamnet Maria del Carmen. Namnet förekommer mycket sällan som tilltalsnamn i Sverige men finns med ett par tusen bärare, främst kvinnor, som sidoförnamn.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In Swahili, short form used from Adil
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
English: colloquial pet form of DEREK , with alteration of the exposed - r of the short form to - l (cf. SAL and TEL ).
as a word
In xgn-pro, mane, crest
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
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)
- Del Lordb. 1894CACanadian film director (1894-1970)
- Del Andrewsb. 1894USHollywood writer and director (1894-1942)
- Del Connellb. 1918USAmerican comics artist and screenwriter
- Del Woodb. 1920USCounty music pianist (1920-1989)
- Del Newmanb. 1930GBBritish musician
- Del Reevesb. 1932USAmerican singer (1932–2007)
- Del Closeb. 1934USactor, writer, teacher (1934-1999)
- Del Henneyb. 1935GBEnglish actor (1935-2019)
- Del Harrisb. 1937USAmerican basketball coach
- Del Synnottb. 1977IEBritish 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 52 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3.4K | #4,616 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 2.9K | #855 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 576 | #4,616 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 10 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 9 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1973 | 5 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2018 | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 are other forms of the name Del?
- In the etymology graph, Derek is a form of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Del mean, and where does it come from?
- British colloquial pet form of Derek, with alteration of the exposed -r of the short form to -] (compare pSal and pTel). Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Del a male or female name?
- Del 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.
- How do you pronounce Del?
- A machine transcription gives /del/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Del have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.3 thousand people named Del in Argentina, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled del.
- Where is Del most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Del is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 3.5 thousand people — even though Argentina holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Del?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,977 people named Del in 2020, about 1 in 84 thousand residents.
- How common is Del compared with other names?
- In Argentina, Del is the 9th most common given name of 119,825 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Del?
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/delThe 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, “Del” — the 9th most common given name in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.