Hengel

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Dutch: fishing rod

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

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

Hengel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Congo - Kinshasa than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • NLNetherlands≈1 in 21K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 566K
  • CDCongo - Kinshasa≈1 in 79K

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.

Congo - Kinshasa (inferred from the name graph)

≈1,300 people, est.

Sources
159 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 21K (inferred from the name graph)

Netherlands, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

metonymic occupational name for a maker of handles, hooks, or hangers, from Middle High German hengel ‘handle’.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Hengel is read(measured from records)

Hengel 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.

  • English65%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Hengel in English.

  • Dutch9.9%

    fishing rod

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

  • German8.4%

    metonymic occupational name for a maker of handles, hooks, or hangers, from Middle High German hengel ‘handle’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

    Shortened form of Dutch van Hengel, a habitational name for someone from Hengel, near Houthalen, in the Belgian province of Limburg.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

    from a pet form of the personal name Heng.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • French5.5%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Hengel 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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Hengel 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 Hengel is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CD Congo - Kinshasa≈1,300 est.≈1 in 79K—Hengel1
NL Netherlands≈830 est.≈1 in 21K—Hengel62
US United States5881 in 566K746Hengel159
DE Germany≈370 est.≈1 in 217K—Hengel52
BR Brazil1291 in 1.6M129——
CA Canada≈81 est.≈1 in 466K—Hengel34
SG Singapore≈14 est.≈1 in 459K—Hengel1

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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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)

Hengel is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Netherlands

    Also written Hèngél

36 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)

Hengel 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 enm, hinge (device a door pivots on)

    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)

175018001850190019502000Wessel Albertus van Hengel, b. 1779Ed Hengel, b. 1855Moxie Hengel, b. 1857Martin Hengel, b. 1926René Hengel, b. 1928Dave Hengel, b. 1961Max Hengel, b. 1977

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 Hengel,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 22 sources across 10 countries.

Official registers attesting Hengel
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020746#32,948
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000621#34,503
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010588#37,792
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—129#52,177
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

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 Hengel come from?
metonymic occupational name for a maker of handles, hooks, or hangers, from Middle High German hengel ‘handle’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Hengel?
A machine transcription gives /ˈhɛŋɡəɫ/ (IPA) for English.
What does the name Hengel mean?
In Dutch, fishing rod
In which country does Hengel have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 1.3 thousand people named Hengel in Congo - Kinshasa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hengel.
How common is the name Hengel?
In the United States, the national register counted 588 people named Hengel in 2010, about 1 in 566 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Hengel?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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

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, “Hengel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Hengel parses inside a full name →