Medal
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A stamped metal disc used as a personal ornament, a charm, or a religious object
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 8 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/meˈdal/(recorded in a dictionary) Spanish · from Wiktionary
Medal is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nicaragua than in any other country.
- NINicaragua≈1 in 2.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- CRCosta Rica1 in 41K
- CZCzechia1 in 162K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Nicaragua (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 129 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,500 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Nicaragua, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)A stamped metal disc used as a personal ornament, a charm, or a religious object.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Medal 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NI Nicaragua | #266 | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | — | Medal | 25 |
| US United States | — | 520 | 1 in 640K | 556 | Medal | 129 |
| FR France | — | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 384K | 20 | Medal | 79 |
| ES Spain | — | 143 | 1 in 350K | 143 | Medal | 25 |
| MX Mexico | — | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 1M | — | Medal | 35 |
| CR Costa Rica | #834 | 125 | 1 in 41K | 125 | Medal | 9 |
| GT Guatemala | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 153K | — | Medal | 4 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 66 | 1 in 162K | 66 | Medal | 9 |
| JM Jamaica | — | ≈15 est. | ≈1 in 186K | — | Medal | 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; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); MVČR — living population register 2017. 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)Medal is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
possibly a derivative of Meda.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Polish, medal (stamped metal disc)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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.
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)17 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 556 | #42,060 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 520 | #41,799 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 421 | #47,389 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 143 | #21,296 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 143 | #21,212 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 125 | #1,292 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 66 | #23,685 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 65 | #9,478 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 34 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 33 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 29 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 29 | — |
Reference works 3
- 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)
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 Medal?
- In the etymology graph, Medalla is a form of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Medal mean, and where does it come from?
- A stamped metal disc used as a personal ornament, a charm, or a religious object. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Medal?
- It depends on the language: in Spanish /meˈdal/ (Wiktionary); in English /ˈmeɾ.ɫ̩/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Medal have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.5 thousand people named Medal in Nicaragua, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled medal.
- How common is the name Medal?
- In the United States, the national register counted 520 people named Medal in 2010, about 1 in 640 thousand residents.
- How common is Medal compared with other names?
- In Nicaragua, Medal is the 266th most common surname of 5,756 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Medal?
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/medalThe 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, “Medal” — the 266th most common surname in Nicaragua. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.