Lavelle
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘descendant of the devotee of (St) FabhaP, a personal name meaning ‘Movement’, ‘Travel’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Lavelle is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 29K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 42K
- USUnited States1 in 55K
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
- 369 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
6,074 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘descendant of the devotee of (St) FabhaP, a personal name meaning ‘Movement’, ‘Travel’. suffix. The word itself is a blend in OF of voizie evil, cun¬ ning (LL vitidtus and avise clever, learned (LL advisatus). Var.: Leveziel (Normandy). La Voipe see Volpe Lavrencic see Lawrence Lavrov see Laur Vars.: Lavell; Mulfaul.
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lavelle 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 | — | 6,074 | 1 in 55K | 6.1K | Lavelle | 369 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 29K | listed | Lavelle | 166 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈920 est. | ≈1 in 68K | — | Lavelle | 4 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈610 est. | ≈1 in 42K | 1 | Lavelle | 88 |
| IE Ireland | #766 | ≈490 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Lavelle | 79 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 47K | — | Lavelle | 25 |
6,074 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present). 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)
Lavelle 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.
from the common French place name Laval, from Old French val ‘valley’. This is also a Huguenot name (with the same etymology), taken to England by Etienne-Abel Laval, a minister of the French church in Castle Street, London, around 1730.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
adopted as an English equivalent of Gaelic 6 Maoil Fhabhail ‘descendant of MaolfhabhaiV, a personal name meaning ‘fond of movement or travel’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
name meaning‘Movement’, ‘Travel’. Vars.: Lavell; Mulfaul.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
habitational name from Lavelle in Puy-de-D6me or various other, smaller places so named.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Irish, Ó Maolfhábhail ( fáball, movement). This, formerly more correctly anglicized Mulfaal, is the name of a north Connacht sept found also in Donegal, where it is sometimes corrupted to Fall. It is also disguised as Melville. MIF
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)
- Louis Lavelleb. 1883FRFrench academic (1883–1951)
- Gary Lavelleb. 1949USAmerican baseball player
- Bradley Lavelleb. 1958CACanadian actor
- Caroline Lavelleb. 1969GBEnglish singer-songwriter and cellist
- James Lavelleb. 1974GBEnglish electronic musician
- Rebecca Lavelleb. 1980AUAustralian singer-songwriter
- John Lavelleb. 1981USactor
- Maya Lavelleb. 1992NLDutch composer
- Rose Lavelleb. 1995USAmerican soccer player
- Nick LavelleGBBritish actor
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 32 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.1K | #5,711 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.9K | #5,463 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.7K | #5,837 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- Where does the name Lavelle come from?
- ‘descendant of the devotee of (St) FabhaP, a personal name meaning ‘Movement’, ‘Travel’. suffix. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- In which country does Lavelle have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 6.1 thousand people named Lavelle, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lavelle.
- What does the name Lavelle mean?
- Recorded meaning: ‘descendant of the devotee of (St) FabhaP, a personal name meaning ‘Movement’, ‘Travel’.
- How common is the name Lavelle?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,074 people named Lavelle in 2010, about 1 in 55 thousand residents.
- How common is Lavelle compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Lavelle is the 766th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lavelle?
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/lavelleThe 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, “Lavelle” — the 766th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.