Poel
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Dutch: a standing body of water; pool, puddle
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 9 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/pul/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Poel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 15K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 254Kas Pol
- BEBelgium1 in 44K
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 Poel 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.
- Spain (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 238 (measured from records)
- 1 in 15K (inferred from the name graph)
2,519 named Pol
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Pol in US United States.
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)Toponymic surname from a place/landscape term; likely with Dehnungs-e, from pōl 'pool, marsh'.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Poel is read
(measured from records)Poel 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.
- Dutch38%
a standing body of water; pool, puddle
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English37%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Poel in English.
- German7.2%
Toponymic surname from a place/landscape term; likely with Dehnungs-e, from pōl 'pool, marsh'.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Wohnstättenname zu Pohl/Poel (Gewässer-/Moorbezeichnung); univerbierte Form. 12 Belege; zeigt niederländische Lautform.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
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)Poel 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | — | 2,519as Pol | 1 in 20K | 24K | Poel | 87 |
| PL Poland | — | 1,785as Pol | 1 in 21K | 903 | Poel | 3 |
| US United States | — | 1,312as Pol | 1 in 254K | 1.6K | Pol | 238 |
| IN India | — | 1,224as Pol | 1 in 1.1M | 1.2K | Poel | 70 |
| NL Netherlands | #256 | 1,188 | 1 in 15K | 1.2K | Poel | 118 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 48K | — | Poel | 22 |
| BE Belgium | — | 268 | 1 in 44K | 268 | Poel | 79 |
2,519 people counted by INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos), counting the spelling pol. 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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)Poel is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Estonian, adessive singular of pood
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In ext, to be able to; can
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)- Jacobus Poelb. 1712NLDutch merchant
- Gustav Poelb. 1804DEGerman politician (1804-1895)
- Wolfgang Poelb. 1841DEGerman judge (1841–1926)
- Alexander Poehlb. 1850RUnot in their usual nameBaltic German chemist and pharmacist (1850–1908)
- Gerhard Poelb. 1886DEGerman officer
- Matthija Poelb. 1895NLHolocaust victim (born 1895)
- Gustav Poelb. 1917DEGerman World War II submarine commander (1917-2009)
- Martina Poelb. 1974ATAustrian actress
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).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)18 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 1.2K | #1,379 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 317 | #59,611 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 298 | #70,715 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 276 | #70,833 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 268 | #6,224 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 261 | #6,697 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 6 | #154,812 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 6 | #24,518 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #374,170 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname 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
- Where does the name Poel come from?
- Toponymic surname from a place/landscape term; likely with Dehnungs-e, from pōl 'pool, marsh'. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte.
- What are other forms of the name Poel?
- In the etymology graph, Pfuhl is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Poel?
- A machine transcription gives /pul/ (IPA) for Dutch.
- What does the name Poel mean?
- In Dutch, a standing body of water; pool, puddle
- In which country does Poel have the most bearers?
- In Spain, the national register counted about 2.5 thousand people named Pol, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Poel most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Poel is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 15 thousand people — even though Spain holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Poel?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 1,188 people named Poel in 2007, about 1 in 15 thousand residents.
- How common is Poel compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Poel is the 256th most common surname of 284,143 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Poel?
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/poelThe 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, “Poel” — the 256th most common surname in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.