Neil
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Form of Niall; used more in Scotland but increasingly in Ireland
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/niːl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Neil is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Bangladesh it is the 36th most common given name.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 528(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 952
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 965
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 Neil 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #743 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 589 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 528 (inferred from the name graph)
≈430,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled নীল in BD Bangladesh.
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)
Form of Niall; used more in Scotland but increasingly in Ireland.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Neil 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈430,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | — | Neil | 67 |
| BD Bangladesh | #36 | ≈320,000 est. | ≈1 in 514 | — | নীল | 36 |
| GB United Kingdom | #79 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 528 | 6 | Neil | 372 |
| US United States | #406 | 81,118 | 1 in 4.1K | 81K | Neil | 589 |
| PH Philippines | #332 | ≈53,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Neil | 164 |
| AU Australia | #170 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 952 | 74 | Neil | 273 |
| NZ New Zealand | #108 | ≈5,100 est. | ≈1 in 965 | — | Neil | 169 |
| GY Guyana | — | 686 | 1 in 1.1K | 686 | — | 14 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Neil 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.
origin, Gael. Niall (gen. Neill), thought to mean ‘Cham¬ pion’. This was adopted by Norsemen in the form Njdll, and was brought to England both directly from Ireland by Scandinavian settlers and indirectly by the Normans. Among the latter it had taken the form Ni(h)el, which was altered by folk etymology to the L form Nigellus (see Nigel).
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
A form of Niall. It is used more in Scotland, but it is increasing in Ireland. Neal is a variant.
as a nameIrish first names
reduced form of McNeil or variant of Neill.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, shortened form of McNeil and O’Neil.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, Irish Gaelic; champion
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- Neil Armstrongb. 1930USAmerican astronaut and lunar explorer (1930–2012)
- Neil Diamondb. 1941USAmerican recording artist; singer-songwriter
- Neil Youngb. 1945CACanadian singer, songwriter and filmmaker (born 1945)
- Neil Jordanb. 1950IEIrish filmmaker and fiction writer
- Neil Gaimanb. 1960GBEnglish writer (born 1960)
- Neil Dudgeonb. 1961GBBritish actor
- Neil Gorsuchb. 1967USAssociate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 2017 (born 1967)
- Neil Patrick Harrisb. 1973USAmerican actor (born 1973)
- Neil Druckmannb. 1978USIsraeli-American video game designer (born 1978)
- Central Ceeb. 1998GBnot in their usual nameBritish rapper (born 1998)
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 111 sources across 58 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 81K | #650 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 686 | #119 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 288 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 199 | #650 |
| AU Australia | NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present) | 1985 | 74 | #98 |
| AU Australia | QLD BDM — Top 100 Baby Names Queensland (1960–present) | 1985 | 40 | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Neil mean, and where does it come from?
- Form of Niall; used more in Scotland but increasingly in Ireland. Recorded by Irish first names.
- Is Neil a male or female name?
- Neil is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Neil?
- In the etymology graph, Nigel, Niall and Nigellus are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Neil have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 428 thousand people named Neil in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled neil.
- How do you pronounce Neil?
- A machine transcription gives /niːl/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Neil?
- In the United States, the national register counted 81,118 people named Neil in 2020, about 1 in 4.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Neil compared with other names?
- In Bangladesh, Neil is the 36th most common given name of 29,323 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Neil?
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/neilThe 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, “Neil” — the 36th most common given name in Bangladesh. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.