Merila
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mɝɪɫə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Merila is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Finland than in any other country.
- EEEstonia≈1 in 8.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- FIFinland1 in 8.2K
- SESweden1 in 486K
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.
- Finland (measured from records)
- Sources
- 24 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 8.2K (inferred from the name graph)
677 people
Highest-authority source
Estonia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Merila 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.
677 people counted by DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup), counting the spelling merilä. 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: DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); the ee-stat-nimed register; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Merila 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.
In got, romanization of 𐌼𐌴𐍂𐌹𐌻𐌰
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Serbo-Croatian, inflection of meriti:
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)
- Toomas Merilab. 1939EEEstonian athletics competitor and coach (born 1939)
- Anu Merilab. 1964EEEstonian journalist and translator (born 1964)
- Herkki-Erich Merilab. 1964EEEstonian artist and photographer (born 1964)
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 13 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 173 | #319 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 142 | #114,166 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 135 | #521 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 121 | #141,309 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 105 | #154,907 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 65 | #18,110 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 13 | #32,983 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 1 | #181,542 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- 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
- How do you pronounce Merila?
- A machine transcription gives /mɝɪɫə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Merila have the most bearers?
- In Finland, the national register counted about 677 people named Merila, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled merila.
- How common is the name Merila?
- In Finland, the national register counted 677 people named Merila, about 1 in 8.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Merila compared with other names?
- In Estonia, Merila is the 601st most common surname of 37,297 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Merila?
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/merilaThe 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, “Merila” — the 601st most common surname in Estonia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.