Manuel

given name · Latin script

Meaning: Americanized form of any of various other European family names derived from Emanuel, for example the Greek patronymic Manouilidis

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

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

Manuel is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country, where it is the 5th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • ECEcuador1 in 92(measured from records)
  • ESSpain1 in 95
  • DODominican Republic≈1 in 141

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.

Spain (measured from records)

525,628 people

#88 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

6 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
546 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 92 (inferred from the name graph)

Ecuador

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

ManuelLatin(measured from records)
마누엘Hangul(measured from records)
ՄանուելArmenian(measured from records)
МанолоCyrillic(measured from records)
ΜανουέλGreek(measured from records)
მანუელGeorgian(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

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)

Americanized form of any of various other European family names derived from Emanuel, for example the Greek patronymic Manouilidis.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Often considered alongside

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Manuel, 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)

Manuel 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 Manuel is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ES Spain#5525,6281 in 95553KManuel323
US United States#338240,8161 in 1.4K240KManuel546
PH Philippines—≈200,000 est.≈1 in 533listedManuel150
PE Peru#7≈200,000 est.≈1 in 159146KManuel158
EC Ecuador#4183,5131 in 92184KManuel118
DO Dominican Republic#3≈75,000 est.≈1 in 14115KManuel116
PT Portugal#9≈73,000 est.≈1 in 142listedManuel241

525,628 people counted by INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; RENIEC — DNI population names; INEC — civil registry names; JCE — Nombres más registrados (annual); the pt-irn-lista-nomes register. 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)

Manuel is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name51 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Germany, Philippines, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Manul, Manuël, Manuel', 'Manuel, Manuél

  • a separate name6 spellings in the group

    Also written Manuēl, Manuël, Manuél, Manúel, Mànuel

  • Indonesian given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, Indonesia, United States, Philippines

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Mánuel, Mąnuel, Manuèl, Manuél, Manuël

  • Polish given name32 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, United States, Croatia, Czechia

    Languages: Polish, Croatian, Czech

    Also written Мануел, Manuil, Мануил, Mánuel, Мануйл

  • Lao given name36 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, United States, Thailand, Spain

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written มานูเอล, มานูแอล, มานุเอล, Mänüël, มานูเอ็ล

  • Danish given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Denmark, Norway

    Languages: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian

    Also written Mānuel, Manuèl

  • Russian given name46 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, United States, Spain, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian

    Also written Мануэль, Мануил, Мануэл, Мануїл, Мануел

106 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)

Manuel 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.

  • In Portuguese, a male given name, equivalent to English Emmanuel or Manuel

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

  • In Spanish, a male given name, derived from biblical Emanuel

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

  • Immanuel (God is with us)

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

  • In French, dérivé de Emmanuel.

    as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition

  • In Swedish, Manuel är en form av → Emanuel, särskilt vanlig i spansk- och portugisisktalande länder.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

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)

12001400160018002000Manuel II Palaiologos, b. 1350Deodoro da Fonseca, b. 1827Manuel L. Quezon, b. 1878Manuel Azaña, b. 1880Manuel II of Portugal, b. 1889Manuel Ávila Camacho, b. 1897Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno, b. 1934António Guterres, b. 1949Raymond Domenech, b. 1952Manuel Valls, b. 1962

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)

InformalHola Manuel,Hi Manuel, (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 142 sources across 67 countries.

Official registers attesting Manuel
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—553K#2
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—526K#4
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020240K#233
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names2024184K#7
PE PeruRENIEC — DNI population names2019146K#12
DO Dominican RepublicJCE — Nombres más registrados (annual)202515K#31
DO Dominican RepublicDominican Republic — Nombres más comunes registrados 2022-202320231.3K#12
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025860—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020524#233
PT PortugalIRN — Lista de Nomes Próprios admitidos———

Reference works 10

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 Manuel?
In the etymology graph, Emmanuel, Manoel and Emanuel are forms of the same name in other languages; Manolo and Nelinho are recorded short or pet forms.
What does the name Manuel mean, and where does it come from?
Americanized form of any of various other European family names derived from Emanuel, for example the Greek patronymic Manouilidis. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Manuel?
A machine transcription gives /manwel/ (IPA) for Spanish.
In which country does Manuel have the most bearers?
In Spain, the national register counted about 526 thousand people named Manuel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled manuel.
Where is Manuel most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Manuel is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 92 people — even though Spain holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Manuel?
In Spain, the national register counted 525,628 people named Manuel, about 1 in 95 residents.
How common is Manuel compared with other names?
In Spain, Manuel is the 5th most common given name of 135,644 given names recorded there.
Is Manuel a male or female name?
Manuel 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.

What do you want to know about Manuel?

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

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, “Manuel” — the 5th most common given name in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Manuel parses inside a full name →