Fornell
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: ‘worker at the small oven or furnace’, from ME fornel; first attested Robert Fornel 1287 IpmY
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/fɔɹnəɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Fornell is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 1.7M(measured from records)
- ESSpain1 in 47K
- SESweden≈1 in 1M
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
- 112 (measured from records)
- 1 in 47K (inferred from the name graph)
1,055 people
Highest-authority source
Spain
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘worker at the small oven or furnace’, from ME fornel; first attested Robert Fornel 1287 IpmY
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Fornell is read(measured from records)
Fornell 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.
- English47%
‘worker at the small oven or furnace’, from ME fornel; first attested Robert Fornel 1287 IpmY
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
nickname from Middle English fornel ‘small oven or furnace’.
as a nameThe Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Spanish30%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Fornell in Spanish.
- Catalan11%
small oven
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Swedish10%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Fornell in Swedish.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Fornell 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 | 1,055 | 1 in 47K | 1.1K | Fornell | 35 |
| US United States | 191 | 1 in 1.7M | 191 | Fornell | 112 |
| SE Sweden | ≈10 est. | ≈1 in 1M | — | Fornell | 29 |
| PL Poland | 8 | 1 in 4.8M | 6 | — | 1 |
| BE Belgium | 1 | 1 in 12M | 1 | — | — |
1,055 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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)
Fornell is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Breton, fourneau, foyer
as a wordDeshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)
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)
- Bror Edvard Fornellb. 1820SESwedish writer (1820-1869)
- Clara Fornellb. 1836SESwedish actress
- Jesús Pinilla i Fornellb. 1874ESSpanish lawyer and journalist (1874-1942)
- Valentí Serra de Manresab. 1959ESnot in their usual nameSpanish historian and archivist
- Imma Monsób. 1959ESnot in their usual nameSpanish fiction writer
- Eva Uustalb. 1960SEnot in their usual nameSwedish gynaecologist
- Albert de la Torreb. 1965ESnot in their usual nameSpanish art critic and journalist
- Javier Fornellb. 1978ESSpanish historician and writter
- Marcus Fornellb. 1994SESwedish ice hockey 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 16 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 1.1K | #4,224 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 1.1K | #4,222 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 191 | #95,545 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 182 | #104,723 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 172 | #97,848 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 6 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 6 | #176,517 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #328,496 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 1 | #198,885 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Fornell mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘worker at the small oven or furnace’, from ME fornel; first attested Robert Fornel 1287 IpmY Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Fornell?
- A machine transcription gives /fɔɹnəɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Fornell have the most bearers?
- In Spain, the national register counted about 1.1 thousand people named Fornell, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fornell.
- Where is Fornell most common?
- Fornell is densest in Spain, where the national register counts about 1 in 47 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Fornell?
- In Spain, the national register counted 1,055 people named Fornell, about 1 in 47 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Fornell?
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/fornellThe 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, “Fornell”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.