Karmel
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Karmel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Israel than in any other country. Recorded meaning: 1. ornamental name from Polish karmel ‘caramel’, ‘burnt sugar’.
- USUnited States1 in 1M(measured from records)
- ILIsrael≈1 in 12K
- BZBelize≈1 in 223K
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.
- Israel (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 177 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)
≈720 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Israel, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- Polishkarmel(measured from records)
- MountCarmel(measured from records)
1. ornamental name from Polish karmel ‘caramel’, ‘burnt sugar’. 2. Jewish (Israeli): modem Hebrew name from Mount Carmel, mentioned in the Bible (1 Kings 18:19).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Karmel 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IL Israel | ≈720 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Karmel | 11 |
| US United States | 324 | 1 in 1M | 371 | Karmel | 177 |
| IN India | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 8.4M | 1 | — | 12 |
| DE Germany | ≈61 est. | ≈1 in 1.3M | — | Karmel | 18 |
| IT Italy | ≈55 est. | ≈1 in 1.1M | 1 | — | 5 |
| AT Austria | ≈38 est. | ≈1 in 231K | — | Karmel | 9 |
| SI Slovenia | ≈9 est. | ≈1 in 246K | 5 | — | — |
| EE Estonia | ≈4 est. | ≈1 in 351K | listed | — | 5 |
| BZ Belize | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 223K | — | Karmel | 1 |
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; SURS — resident population given names; ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls). 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)
Karmel 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.
In German, Mount Carmel (a mountain in Palestine)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Polish, caramel (confection)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Serbo-Croatian, planina u donjoj Palestini, oronim
as a wordSkok, Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (1971-74)
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)
- David Karmelb. 1907GBBritish QC
- Peter Karmelb. 1922AUAustralian economist (1922–2008)
- Ilona Karmelb. 1925PLPolish-American author (1925–2000)
- Roberta Karmelb. 1937USAmerican lawyer
- Annabel Karmelb. 1957British food writer
- Pip Karmelb. 1963AUAustralian film director, film editor, and screenwriter
- Ian Karmelb. 1984USAmerican stand-up comedian and writer (born 1984)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 39 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 371 | #58,949 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 324 | #61,899 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 295 | #63,297 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 5 | #143,546 |
| 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
- 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
- Kotík, Antonín, Naše příjmení (nové vydání, 1897)
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 Karmel come from?
- 1. ornamental name from Polish karmel ‘caramel’, ‘burnt sugar’. 2. Jewish (Israeli): modem Hebrew name from Mount Carmel, mentioned in the Bible (1 Kings 18:19). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What does the name Karmel mean?
- Recorded meaning: 1. ornamental name from Polish karmel ‘caramel’, ‘burnt sugar’.
- In which country does Karmel have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 716 people named Karmel in Israel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled karmel.
- How common is the name Karmel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 324 people named Karmel in 2010, about 1 in 1.0 million residents.
What do you want to know about Karmel?
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/karmelThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Karmel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.