Lovell
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from a medieval nickname meaning ‘little wolf’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/lɐvəɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lovell is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 7.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 8.2K
- USUnited States1 in 16K
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
- 446 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.2K (inferred from the name graph)
21,171 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from a medieval nickname meaning ‘little wolf’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lovell 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 | — | 21,171 | 1 in 16K | 21K | Lovell | 446 |
| GB United Kingdom | #775 | ≈8,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.2K | listed | Lovell | 232 |
| AU Australia | #732 | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 7.7K | — | Lovell | 166 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 16K | 1 | Lovell | 130 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 33K | — | Lovell | 12 |
| NZ New Zealand | #879 | ≈520 est. | ≈1 in 9.4K | — | Lovell | 78 |
| GY Guyana | #140 | 348 | 1 in 2.2K | 348 | Lovell | 10 |
| DM Dominica | — | 7 | 1 in 11K | 7 | — | 1 |
21,171 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; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 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)
Lovell 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.
Transferred use of the surname, which originated in the Middle Ages from the Old (Norman) French nickname Louvel ‘wolf-cub’, a diminutive of lou ‘wolf’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, nickname from Anglo-Norman French lo(u)ve ‘female wolf’ (feminine form of lou, from Latin lupus) + the diminutive suffix -el.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, lou wolf (L lupus) + the dim. suffix -el. Vars.: Lovel, Lowell.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, An English surname from Anglo-Norman.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, James, US astronaut
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper 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)
- James Lovellb. 1737USAmerican educator and statesman from Boston, Massachusetts (1737-1814)
- Alberto Lovellb. 1912ARArgentine heavyweight boxer (1912–1966)
- Bernard Lovellb. 1913GBEnglish physicist and radio astronomer
- Guillermo Lovellb. 1918ARboxer (1918–1967)
- Jim Lovellb. 1928USAmerican astronaut (1928–2025)
- Patricia Lovellb. 1929AUAustralian film producer and actress
- Dyson Lovellb. 1936GBBritish actor and producer (1936–2024)
- Santiago Lovellb. 1942ARArgentine boxer (1942-2002)
- Pedro Lovellb. 1945ARArgentine boxer
- Vella Lovellb. 1985USAmerican actress
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 45 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 21K | #1,700 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 21K | #1,596 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 20K | #1,729 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 348 | #310 |
| DM Dominica | Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025 | 2025 | 7 | #220 |
| 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 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- What does the name Lovell mean, and where does it come from?
- from a medieval nickname meaning ‘little wolf’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Lovell?
- A machine transcription gives /lɐvəɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Lovell have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 21 thousand people named Lovell, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lovell.
- Where is Lovell most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lovell is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 2.2 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Lovell?
- In the United States, the national register counted 21,171 people named Lovell in 2010, about 1 in 16 thousand residents.
- How common is Lovell compared with other names?
- In Guyana, Lovell is the 140th most common surname of 15,834 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lovell?
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/lovellThe 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, “Lovell” — the 140th most common surname in Guyana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.