Niall
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Niall is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country. In Ireland it is the 80th most common given name. Recorded meaning: From néal, ‘cloud’; borne by Niall of the Nine Hostages and other Irish kings.
- IEIreland≈1 in 812(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 8.2K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 17K
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 Niall 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 Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 291 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 812 (inferred from the name graph)
≈8,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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)
From néal, ‘cloud’; borne by Niall of the Nine Hostages and other Irish kings.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Niall 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | #645 | ≈8,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.2K | 259 | Niall | 243 |
| IE Ireland | #80 | ≈6,400 est. | ≈1 in 812 | 46 | Niall | 173 |
| US United States | — | 2,510as Nile | 1 in 133K | 2.2K | Niall | 291 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 17K | 2 | Niall | 151 |
| JP Japan | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 102K | — | Niall | 23 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | — | ≈230 est. | ≈1 in 43K | — | Niall | 38 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 33K | — | Niall | 51 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 59 | 1 in 293K | 59 | Niall | 35 |
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: Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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)
Niall 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.
¢ Original Irish and Scottish Gaelic 182 : spelling of Neil. It has been strongly revived among non-Gaelic speakers in the 20th century.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A male given name from Irish or Scottish Gaelic used in Ireland and Scotland since the Middle Ages.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, shortened form of McNeil and O’Neil.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, king of Ireland; pers. name. Irish
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, name of a 5th-century Irish king
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)
- Niall Noígíallachb. 301Irish king (5th century)
- Niall MacGinnisb. 1913IEIrish actor (1913–1977)
- Niall O'Brienb. 1946IEIrish actor
- Niall Buggyb. 1948IEIrish actor
- Niall Fergusonb. 1964GBBritish historian
- Niall Quinnb. 1966IEIrish association football player and manager
- Niall Matterb. 1980CACanadian-American actor
- Niall McGinnb. 1987GBNorthern Irish footballer (born 1987)
- Niall Killoranb. 1992JPJapanese association football player (1992-)
- Niall Horanb. 1993IEIrish singer-songwriter
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 52 sources across 30 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 61 | #44,978 |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Niall mean, and where does it come from?
- From néal, ‘cloud’; borne by Niall of the Nine Hostages and other Irish kings. Recorded by Irish first names.
- In which country does Niall have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 8.0 thousand people named Niall in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled niall.
- What are other forms of the name Niall?
- In the etymology graph, Neil, Njål and Njáll are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Is Niall a male or female name?
- Niall 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.
- How common is the name Niall?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 59 people named Niall, about 1 in 293 thousand residents.
- How common is Niall compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Niall is the 645th most common given name of 404,737 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Niall?
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/niallThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Niall” — the 645th most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.