Memel

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in German: the Memel, the Neman (a river in Lithuania that runs by this city)

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Memel 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 844Kas Neman(measured from records)
  • NLNetherlands1 in 227K
  • SESweden1 in 176Kas Neman

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 Memel 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.

United States (measured from records)

394 named Neman, 2010

Sources
178 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 227K (inferred from the name graph)

Netherlands

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

NemanLatin(measured from records)

Locally spelled Neman in US United States, SE Sweden, FI Finland.

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)

river, city, Lithuania

Sources 1

  • Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

How Memel is read(measured from records)

Memel 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.

  • French48%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Memel in French.

  • English32%

    river, city, Lithuania

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • German9.6%

    the Memel, the Neman (a river in Lithuania that runs by this city)

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

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Memel 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 Memel is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States394as Neman1 in 844K394Neman178
NL Netherlands761 in 227K76Memel5
AR Argentina65as Neman1 in 700K65——
SE Sweden58as Neman1 in 176K58Neman6
BR Brazil43as Neman1 in 4.9M43——
FI Finland≈16 est.≈1 in 347K—Neman1
DK Denmark9as Neman1 in 652K9——

394 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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)

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

  • Arabic surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Morocco

    Also written Mèmèl

30 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)

Memel is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Portuguese, Memel, Klaipėda (a city in Lithuania)

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

  • In Polish, synonym of zamieszanie

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

  • In Basque, insignificant

    as a wordTrask, Etymological Dictionary of Basque (2008 posthumous draft)

  • In Latvian, Mēmele

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 7 sources across 5 countries.

Official registers attesting Memel
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)200776#23,407
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

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 Memel come from?
river, city, Lithuania Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
What does the name Memel mean?
In German, the Memel, the Neman (a river in Lithuania that runs by this city)
In which country does Memel have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 394 people named Neman, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Memel most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Memel is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 227 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Memel?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 76 people named Memel in 2007, about 1 in 227 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Memel?

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

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, “Memel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Memel parses inside a full name →