Hillel
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A Hebrew name meaning 'praising', famously borne by the father of the judge Abdon and later by the renowned sage Hillel the Elder
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˌhɪˈɫɛɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Hillel is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 309K(measured from records)
- ILIsrael≈1 in 46K
- DZAlgeria≈1 in 141K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 218 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 46K (inferred from the name graph)
1,075 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Israel, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A Hebrew name meaning 'praising', famously borne by the father of the judge Abdon and later by the renowned sage Hillel the Elder.
Sources 1
- Biblical Names Compiled Database
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hillel 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 1,075 | 1 in 309K | 1.1K | Hillel | 218 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 141K | listed | — | 2 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈260 est. | ≈1 in 219K | — | Hillel | 18 |
| IL Israel | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 46K | — | Hillel | 49 |
| CA Canada | ≈78 est. | ≈1 in 483K | — | Hillel | 44 |
| NL Netherlands | ≈69 est. | ≈1 in 249K | listed | Hillel | 5 |
1,075 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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. 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)
Hillel 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.
Praising or 'he has praised'
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
In English, Jewish scholar
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Jewish: Hebrew name (apparently derived from the Hebrew word meaning ‘praise’) borne in the Bible by the father of one of the Judges of Israel (Judges 12: 13). It was also the name of an outstanding 1st-century rabbi and has been a popular Jewish name as a result of his fame.
as a word
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)
- Hillelb. 50IQJewish religious leader of the 1st century
- Hillel ben Samuelb. 1220ITSpanish-Italian rabbi
- Hillel Zeitlinb. 1871PLPolish writer (1871–1942)
- Hillel Kookb. 1915ILRevisionist Zionist activist and politician (1915-2001)
- Hillel Furstenbergb. 1935USGerman-born US–Israeli mathematician
- Hillel Halkinb. 1939USAmerican-born Israeli translator, biographer, literary critic, and novelist
- Hillel Steinerb. 1942CACanadian political philosopher
- Joseph Silvermanb. 1955USnot in their usual nameAmerican mathematician (1955-)
- Hillel Slovakb. 1962ILIsraeli-American musician (1962–1988)
- Aaron Swartzb. 1986USnot in their usual nameAmerican computer programmer and internet-political activist (1986–2013)
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 28 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 184 | #103,857 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 139 | #123,796 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 113 | #136,783 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 does the name Hillel mean, and where does it come from?
- A Hebrew name meaning 'praising', famously borne by the father of the judge Abdon and later by the renowned sage Hillel the Elder. Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
- How do you pronounce Hillel?
- A machine transcription gives /ˌhɪˈɫɛɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Hillel a male or female name?
- Hillel is a male 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.
- In which country does Hillel have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.1 thousand people named Hillel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hillel.
- How common is the name Hillel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,075 people named Hillel in 2020, about 1 in 309 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Hillel?
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/hillelThe 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, “Hillel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.