Meynell

surname · Latin script

Meaning: (i) from a Norman female personal name of Germanic origin, meaning literally 'strength-battle'; (ii) person who lives in an isolated house or fortified manorhouse, or servant in the household of a for

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

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

Meynell is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom
  • NZNew Zealand
  • AUAustralia

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

(i) from a Norman female personal name of Germanic origin, meaning literally 'strength-battle'; (ii) person who lives in an isolated house or fortified manorhouse, or servant in the household of a fortified manorhouse

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Where in the world(measured from records)

Recorded in:

No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.

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)

Meynell 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 English, from one of the French places called Mesnil, from OFr mesnil < Lat *mansionile; first attested Robert de Meinil 1166–77 (Yorkshire). Also from OG Maginhild 'strength in battle'; first attested Mehenilda vidua c1250.

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, Wilfrid, English journalist and writer;

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, Alice Cliristiana Gertrude, poet

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, and essayist

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

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)

1700180019002000Hugo Meynell, b. 1735Frederick Villiers Meynell, b. 1801Alice Meynell, b. 1847Wilfrid Meynell, b. 1852Viola Meynell, b. 1885Francis Meynell, b. 1891Laurence Meynell, b. 1899Godfrey Meynell, b. 1904Katharine Meynell, b. 1954Rhys Meynell, b. 1988

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)

FormalDear Ms Meynell,
InformalHi Meynell,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 8 sources across 4 countries.

Official registers attesting Meynell
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—7#143,513
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—3#157,796
GB United KingdomA Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988)———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • 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 does the name Meynell mean, and where does it come from?
(i) from a Norman female personal name of Germanic origin, meaning literally 'strength-battle'; (ii) person who lives in an isolated house or fortified manorhouse, or servant in the household of a for… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Meynell?
A machine transcription gives /mɛɪnəɫ/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Meynell have the most bearers?
Meynell is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.

What do you want to know about Meynell?

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/meynell

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, “Meynell”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Meynell parses inside a full name →