Newell

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Different form of Neville; or person who lives or works in the “new hall”

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

Newell is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 6.9K(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 7.5K
  • CACanada≈1 in 9.1K

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.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈120,000 people, est.

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
483 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 5.4K (inferred from the name graph)

Jamaica, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

NewellLatin(measured from records)
นิวเวลThai(measured from records)
뉴얼Hangul(measured from records)

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)

Different form of Neville; or person who lives or works in the “new hall”.

Sources 1

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

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Newell 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 Newell is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈120,000 est.≈1 in 12K—Newell11
US United States#90932,9091 in 10K33KNewell483
GB United Kingdom#658≈9,500 est.≈1 in 6.9K10KNewell229
MM Myanmar (Burma)—≈7,300 est.≈1 in 7.7K—Newell3
CA Canada#873≈4,200 est.≈1 in 9.1K—Newell173
AU Australia#734≈3,400 est.≈1 in 7.5K1Newell165
IE Ireland#703≈670 est.≈1 in 7.7K—Newell67
JM Jamaica#219≈520 est.≈1 in 5.4K—Newell15

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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present). 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)

Newell is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Spain, Colombia

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Nèwèll

  • Polish surname13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, United Kingdom, Russia

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Ньюелл, Ньюэлл

49 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)

Newell 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 English, for Nevill or Noel; first attested Thomas de Newell 1201 FFEss

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Tnuthghall ‘descendant of TnuthgaV, a personal name composed of the elements tnuth ‘desire’, ‘envy’ -t- gal ‘valor’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • variant of Neville.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • variant of Noel.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In enm, alternative form of Nowel

    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)

190019502000Norman D. Newell, b. 1909Norman Newell, b. 1919Allen Newell, b. 1927David Newell, b. 1938Mike Newell, b. 1942Gabe Newell, b. 1962Nick Newell, b. 1986Alex Newell, b. 1992Tegan Nox, b. 1994Kimberly Newell, b. 1995
  • Norman D. Newellb. 1909USAmerican paleontologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History (1909–2005)
  • Norman Newellb. 1919GBEnglish record producer, songwriter and lyricist (1919-2004)
  • Allen Newellb. 1927USAmerican cognitive scientist (1927–1992)
  • David Newellb. 1938USAmerican actor (born 1938)
  • Mike Newellb. 1942GBBritish director and producer (born 1942)
  • Gabe Newellb. 1962USAmerican computer programmer and businessman
  • Nick Newellb. 1986USAmerican mixed martial arts fighter
  • Alex Newellb. 1992USAmerican actor and singer (born 1992)
  • Tegan Noxb. 1994GBnot in their usual nameWelsh professional wrestler
  • Kimberly Newellb. 1995CACanadian ice hockey goaltender (born 1995)

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 33 sources across 18 countries.

Official registers attesting Newell
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201033K#1,064
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202031K#1,098
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200031K#1,021
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)200210K#733
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 6

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 Newell mean, and where does it come from?
Different form of Neville; or person who lives or works in the “new hall”. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How common is the name Newell?
In the United States, the national register counted 32,909 people named Newell in 2010, about 1 in 10 thousand residents.
How common is Newell compared with other names?
In Jamaica, Newell is the 219th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.
In which country does Newell have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 120 thousand people named Newell in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled newell.

What do you want to know about Newell?

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

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, “Newell” — the 219th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Newell parses inside a full name →