Novel
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Newly made, formed or evolved; having no precedent; of recent origin; new
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Novel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Indonesia than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 1M(measured from records)
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 69K
- CDCongo - Kinshasa≈1 in 88K
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.
- Indonesia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 124 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 69K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,900 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Indonesia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Newly made, formed or evolved; having no precedent; of recent origin; new.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
How Novel is read(measured from records)
Novel is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- French34%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Novel in French.
- English31%
Newly made, formed or evolved; having no precedent; of recent origin; new.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish13%
novel, new
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Indonesian9.3%
novel: a work of prose fiction, longer than a novella
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Novel 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID Indonesia | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 69K | listed | — | 2 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 88K | — | Novel | 1 |
| FR France | ≈720 est. | ≈1 in 95K | 81 | — | 2 |
| US United States | 322 | 1 in 1M | 322 | Novel | 124 |
| ES Spain | 205 | 1 in 244K | 205 | Novel | 15 |
| SI Slovenia | 22 | 1 in 96K | 22 | — | 1 |
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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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)
Novel is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Italian, forma dialetal setentrional, redução de Novello
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
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)
- Arnaud Novelb. 1201FRFrench preacher, cardinal
- Puput Novelb. 1974IDIndonesian actress and singer (1974–2024)
- Igor NovelSIresearcher
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 34 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 322 | #62,189 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 288 | #72,692 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 275 | #67,113 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 205 | #16,253 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 205 | #16,209 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 125 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 96 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 96 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 83 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 81 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 80 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 77 | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Novel mean, and where does it come from?
- Newly made, formed or evolved; having no precedent; of recent origin; new. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Novel have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.9 thousand people named Novel in Indonesia, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Novel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 322 people named Novel in 2010, about 1 in 1.0 million residents.
What do you want to know about Novel?
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/novelThe 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, “Novel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.