Ornella

given name · Latin script

Meaning: Name of a character in Gabriele d’Annunzio’s Figlia de Iorio (1904), probably taken from the Tuscan dialect word ornello ‘flowering ash tree’

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

Ornella is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • ITItaly≈1 in 2.4K(inferred from the name graph)
  • ARArgentina≈1 in 7.8K
  • CMCameroon≈1 in 2.2K

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.

Italy (inferred from the name graph)

≈26,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
91 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 2.2K (inferred from the name graph)

Cameroon, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

OrnellaLatin(measured from records)
ΟρνελλαGreek(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)

Name of a character in Gabriele d’Annunzio’s Figlia de Iorio (1904), probably taken from the Tuscan dialect word ornello ‘flowering ash tree’.

Sources 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Ornella 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 Ornella is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IT Italy—≈26,000 est.≈1 in 2.4K5Ornella54
CD Congo - Kinshasa#678≈18,000 est.≈1 in 5.7K—Ornella9
CM Cameroon—≈13,000 est.≈1 in 2.2K—Ornella5
FR France—≈6,200 est.≈1 in 11K7.9KOrnella2
AR Argentina#726≈5,800 est.≈1 in 7.8K86Ornella84
BE Belgium—≈1,200 est.≈1 in 10K5Ornella14
US United States—7891 in 422K789Ornella91
UY Uruguay#588≈160 est.≈1 in 21K—Ornella22

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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns). 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)

Ornella is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Italian given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, United States, Spain, Belgium

    Also written Ornèlla, Ornellã, Ornellä

  • English given name19 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Italy, Germany, Australia

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Ornélla, Örnëllã, Örñëllā, Ornëllä, Ôrnęllá

  • Croatian given name13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, United States, Italy, Bulgaria

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Serbian

    Also written Ornela, Орнела

53 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)

Ornella 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 French, Nom italien moderne, peut-être lié à ornello, « frêne ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In French, Italien d’Aure; origine latine, « en or ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In French, Nom italien moderne, probablement apparenté à ornello, le frêne à fleurs.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In German, Anfang des 20.Jh.s in Italien auf­ gekommener weibl. Vom., der von G. D’An­ nunzio für eine Gestalt seiner Tragödie »La figlia di Iorio« (1904) in Anlehnung an italien. omello »Esche« geprägt wurde.

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • La que es como el fresno florido

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

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)

19201940196019802000Ornella Volta, b. 1927Ornella Vanoni, b. 1934Elena Ornella Paciotti, b. 1941Ornella Ferrara, b. 1968Ornella Fleury, b. 1986Ornella Oettl Reyes, b. 1991Ornella De La Rosa, b. 1996Ornella Micheli, b. 2000

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 77 sources across 44 countries.

Official registers attesting Ornella
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20247.9K#716
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020789#14,807
AR Argentinadatos.gob.ar — nombres.datos.gob.ar per-name lookup (1922–2015)201573—
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — births 1922–2015 (Kaggle mirror)201573—
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present)202448#1,090
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)20256—
IT ItalyISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend)20245#1,733
BE BelgiumStatbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns)20235#1,371

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary

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 Ornella mean, and where does it come from?
Name of a character in Gabriele d’Annunzio’s Figlia de Iorio (1904), probably taken from the Tuscan dialect word ornello ‘flowering ash tree’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
Is Ornella a male or female name?
Ornella is a female 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.
In which country does Ornella have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 26 thousand people named Ornella in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ornella.
How common is the name Ornella?
In the United States, the national register counted 789 people named Ornella in 2020, about 1 in 422 thousand residents.
How common is Ornella compared with other names?
In Uruguay, Ornella is the 588th most common given name of 12,212 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Ornella?

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

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, “Ornella” — the 588th most common given name in Uruguay. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ornella parses inside a full name →