Medel

surname · Latin script

Meaning: 1. from the personal name Medel, possibly a derivative of the Latin name Emetherius

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

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

Medel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 72K(measured from records)
  • ESSpain1 in 23K
  • ARArgentina1 in 36K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

4,620 people, 2010

Sources
224 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)

Spain

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

1. from the personal name Medel, possibly a derivative of the Latin name Emetherius. 2. habitational name from San Medel, a town in Salamanca province.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Medel 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 Medel is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—4,6201 in 72K4.6KMedel224
ES Spain—2,2041 in 23K2.2KMedel38
AR Argentina—1,2651 in 36K1.3K—1
BR Brazil—1061 in 2M106——
PL Poland—391 in 982K24—1
UY Uruguay—311 in 109K31——
SE Sweden—191 in 537K19—4
BJ Benin#595———Medel1

4,620 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)

Medel is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Polish surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, Philippines, Spain

    Also written Mędel

55 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)

Medel 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 Swedish, a means (to an end)

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

  • In Dutch, a hamlet in Tiel, Gelderland, Netherlands

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

  • In Slovenian, masculine singular l-participle of mesti

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

  • In Polish, handful of harvested grain

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

  • In ang, alternative form of mæþel

    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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1900195020002050Manuel Medel, b. 1906Braulio Medel Cámara, b. 1947Arturo Sanhueza, b. 1979Elena Medel, b. 1985Tallie Medel, b. 1986Gary Medel, b. 1987Marco Medel, b. 1989Youcef Sabri Medel, b. 1996Kevin Medel, b. 1996Alonso Medel, b. 2001

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)

FormalEstimado/a Medel,Dear Medel, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Medel,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 28 sources across 17 countries.

Official registers attesting Medel
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020104.6K#7,224
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020204.1K#7,726
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020003.1K#9,607
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—2.2K#2,227
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—2.2K#2,226
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—1.3K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—106#60,636
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—31—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)202624—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—24#80,733
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—19#25,797
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)202615—

Reference works 5

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 Medel come from?
1. from the personal name Medel, possibly a derivative of the Latin name Emetherius. 2. habitational name from San Medel, a town in Salamanca province. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Medel?
A machine transcription gives /meðel/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What does the name Medel mean?
Recorded meaning: 1. from the personal name Medel, possibly a derivative of the Latin name Emetherius.
In which country does Medel have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 4.6 thousand people named Medel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled medel.
Where is Medel most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Medel is densest in Spain — about 1 in 23 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Medel?
In the United States, the national register counted 4,620 people named Medel in 2010, about 1 in 72 thousand residents.
How common is Medel compared with other names?
In Benin, Medel is the 595th most common surname of 5,339 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Medel?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Medel” — the 595th most common surname in Benin. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Medel parses inside a full name →