Novela

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: A Latin American soap opera

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

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

rarermore common
  • PHPhilippines≈1 in 45K(inferred from the name graph)
  • MZMozambique≈1 in 1.1K
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 19K

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.

Mozambique (inferred from the name graph)

≈26,000 people, est.

Sources
83 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.1K (inferred from the name graph)

Mozambique, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

soap opera

Sources 1

  • A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese

Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.

How Novela is read(measured from records)

Novela is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.

  • Spanish40%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Novela in Spanish.

  • English35%

    A Latin American soap opera.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Indonesian12%

    novel: a work of prose fiction, shorter than a novel

    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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Novela 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 Novela is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
MZ Mozambique#105≈26,000 est.≈1 in 1.1K2Novela20
ZA South Africa—≈3,000 est.≈1 in 19K—Novela15
PH Philippines—≈2,500 est.≈1 in 45K—Novela18
US United States—2671 in 1.2M267Novela83
IT Italy—≈170 est.≈1 in 377K—Novela2
PT Portugal—≈19 est.≈1 in 540K—Novela6

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; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)

Novela is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Croatian surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines

    Also written Новела

43 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)

Novela 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 Portuguese, soap opera

    as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese

  • In Portuguese, novella (short novel or long short story)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Tsonga, Tsonga clan of the Nhlave grouping (with Nkuna, Mabunda, Maswanganyi, Nkwinika). Clan name; literal meaning uncertain.

    as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames

  • In pro, item of news

    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)

  • Paavo Novelab. 1914FIFinnish businessman, writer and columnist

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 20 sources across 11 countries.

Official registers attesting Novela
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010267#72,771
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020253#80,815
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000180#94,227
MZ MozambiqueWikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names—2#47
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 1

  • 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

Where does the name Novela come from?
soap opera Recorded by A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese.
What does the name Novela mean?
In English, A Latin American soap opera.
In which country does Novela have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 26 thousand people named Novela in Mozambique, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled novela.
How common is the name Novela?
In the United States, the national register counted 267 people named Novela in 2010, about 1 in 1.2 million residents.
How common is Novela compared with other names?
In Mozambique, Novela is the 105th most common surname of 2,021 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Novela?

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/novela

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, “Novela” — the 105th most common surname in Mozambique. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Novela parses inside a full name →