Jela

given name · Latin script

Meaning: Swahili: 'father was suffering during birth' (from 'jela' < 'jail')

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

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

Jela is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Croatia than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • HRCroatia1 in 713(measured from records)
  • RSSerbia≈1 in 8.3K
  • SISlovenia1 in 9.1K

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.

Croatia (measured from records)

5,933 people, 2021

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
40 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 713 (inferred from the name graph)

Croatia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

JelaLatin(measured from records)
ИелаCyrillic(measured from records)

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Swahili: 'father was suffering during birth' (from 'jela' < 'jail').

Sources 1

  • African Names

Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Jela 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 Jela is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
HR Croatia#1315,9331 in 7135.9KJela29
RS Serbia#531≈840 est.≈1 in 8.3K—Jela22
PH Philippines—≈790 est.≈1 in 139K—Jela6
BA Bosnia & Herzegovina#677≈400 est.≈1 in 9.6K—Jela8
AT Austria—≈280 est.≈1 in 32K7——
SI Slovenia—2321 in 9.1K232Jela4

5,933 people counted by DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form), 2021. 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: DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); SURS — resident population given names; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024). 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)

Jela is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, Germany, Austria

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Je'La, Jéla, Jèla, Jelae, Jelä

  • Spanish given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, United States, Mexico, Peru

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Ĵëlä, Jéla, Jelä

  • Slovak given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Slovakia, Czechia, United States

    Languages: Slovak, Czech

    Also written Jelä

  • French given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Philippines, Belgium, United States

    Also written Jéla

  • Arabic given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Egypt, Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia

    Also written Jélá, Jěľã, Jeľa

41 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)

Jela 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.

  • Father in pain at birth

    as a nameThe book of African names

  • prison.

    as a nameAfrican Names

  • In wym, alder, any tree of the genus Alnus

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

  • In Czech, inflection of jet:

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

  • In Swahili, jail, prison

    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)

1850190019502000Jela Spiridonović-Savić, b. 1891Jela Fabianová, b. 1893Jela Siebenscheinová, b. 1912Jela Lukešová, b. 1930Jela Cvijanov, b. 1938Jela Salvová, b. 1946Jela Špitková, b. 1947Jela Krečič, b. 1979Jela Cello, b. 1987Jela Mihailovic, b. 1987

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)

InformalBok Jela,Hi Jela, (English)

A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 35 sources across 23 countries.

Official registers attesting Jela
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)20215.9K#178
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021)20214K—
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2008291#340
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2009287#347
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2010284#351
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2011282#355
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2012280#360
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2013277#365
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2014273#370
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2015270#377
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2016265#384
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2017261#389

Reference works 2

  • Wikipedia given-name 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

What does the name Jela mean, and where does it come from?
Swahili: 'father was suffering during birth' (from 'jela' < 'jail'). Recorded by African Names.
How do you pronounce Jela?
A machine transcription gives /jěːla/ (IPA) for Croatian.
Is Jela a male or female name?
Jela 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.
What are other forms of the name Jela?
In the etymology graph, Elizabeth, Lisa and Isabel are forms of the same name in other languages; Jelica is a recorded short or pet form; it is recorded as a short form of Jelena.
In which country does Jela have the most bearers?
In Croatia, the national register counted about 5.9 thousand people named Jela, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jela.
Where is Jela most common?
Jela is densest in Croatia, where the national register counts about 1 in 713 people carrying it.
How common is the name Jela?
In Croatia, the national register counted 5,933 people named Jela in 2021, about 1 in 713 residents.
How common is Jela compared with other names?
In Croatia, Jela is the 131st most common given name of 14,066 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Jela?

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

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, “Jela” — the 131st most common given name in Croatia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Jela parses inside a full name →