Lionel
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in French: Diminutive of Louis/Lion; from Latin leo, 'lion'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ljɔnɛl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lionel is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country. In Congo - Kinshasa it is the 97th most common given name.
- FRFrance≈1 in 996(inferred from the name graph)
- CMCameroon≈1 in 1.2K
- BEBelgium≈1 in 1.9K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Lionel itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 414 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 996 (inferred from the name graph)
≈68,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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)
Diminutive of Louis/Lion; from Latin leo, 'lion'.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
How Lionel is read(measured from records)
Lionel is one spelling over 3 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.
- French39%
Diminutive of Louis/Lion; from Latin leo, 'lion'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Dérivé de Léon; origine latine, « lion ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
- English32%
Old French; young lion. See Leander, Leo, Leonard.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
probably a variant of Linnell , to judge by its early W Midland distribution.
as a nameThe Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
A male given name from Latin of mostly British usage.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish22%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Lionel in Spanish.
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.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Lionel, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lionel 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #191 | ≈68,000 est. | ≈1 in 996 | 92K | Lionel | 414 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | #97 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | — | Lionel | 22 |
| US United States | — | 28,890as Leonel | 1 in 12K | 29K | Lionel | 336 |
| CM Cameroon | #121 | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Lionel | 44 |
| BR Brazil | — | 17,917as Leonel | 1 in 12K | 19K | — | 1 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 12,062as Leonel | 1 in 1.4K | 12K | — | 8 |
| BE Belgium | #293 | ≈6,200 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Lionel | 129 |
| SE Sweden | — | 1,811 | 1 in 5.6K | 1.8K | — | 25 |
| GY Guyana | — | 369 | 1 in 2K | 369 | — | — |
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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); INEC — civil registry names; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Lionel 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.
From a medieval diminutive of the Old French name Léon (see jLeo) or the Middle English nickname Lion.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
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)
- Lionel Barrymoreb. 1878USAmerican actor, director and screenwriter (1878–1954)
- Lionel Robbins, Baron Robbinsb. 1898GBBritish economist (1898–1984)
- Lionel Newmanb. 1916USAmerican composer, pianist and conductor (1916-1989)
- Lionel Jospinb. 1937FR93rd Prime Minister of France (1997–2002)
- Lionel Richieb. 1949USAmerican singer, songwriter and actor
- Jeffrey Dahmerb. 1960USnot in their usual nameAmerican serial killer (1960–1994)
- Keith Urbanb. 1967NZnot in their usual nameAustralian-American musician
- Lionel Aingimeab. 1969NRNauruan politician, president from 2019
- Lionel Scalonib. 1978ARArgentine football coach (born 1978)
- Líob. 1987ARnot in their usual nameArgentine association football player (born 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)
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 118 sources across 65 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 92K | #978 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 20K | #1,601 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 1.8K | #1,122 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 1.5K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.5K | #6,166 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 1.3K | #610 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 797 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 678 | #11,861 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 419 | — |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 369 | #266 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 297 | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 69 | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 are other forms of the name Lionel?
- In the etymology graph, Leo, Leonel and Leoncio are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Léon.
- How do you pronounce Lionel?
- A machine transcription gives /ljɔnɛl/ (IPA) for French.
- What does the name Lionel mean, and where does it come from?
- Diminutive of Louis/Lion; from Latin leo, 'lion'. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- Is Lionel a male or female name?
- Lionel 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 Lionel have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 68 thousand people named Lionel in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lionel.
- How common is the name Lionel?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 1,811 people named Lionel, about 1 in 5.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Lionel compared with other names?
- In France, Lionel is the 191st most common given name of 754,146 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lionel?
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/lionelThe 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, “Lionel” — the 191st most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.