Purnell
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Different form of Parnell
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈpɝnəɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Purnell is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 20K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 29K
- USUnited States1 in 39K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 364 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 20K (inferred from the name graph)
8,441 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, 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)
Different form of Parnell.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Purnell 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 8,441 | 1 in 39K | 8.4K | Purnell | 364 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 20K | 3.9K | Purnell | 173 |
| DE Germany | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 65K | — | Purnell | 40 |
| EG Egypt | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 100K | — | Purnell | 3 |
| AU Australia | ≈870 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Purnell | 109 |
| CA Canada | ≈670 est. | ≈1 in 56K | 1 | Purnell | 89 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 30K | — | Purnell | 29 |
8,441 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Clyde Purnellb. 1877GBEnglish football player (1877-1934)
- Fred S. Purnellb. 1882USAmerican politician (1882-1939)
- William R. Purnellb. 1886USAmerican officer
- Oliver Purnellb. 1953USAmerican basketball player-coach
- Phil Purnellb. 1964GBEnglish footballer (born 1964)
- James Purnellb. 1970GBBBC's Director of Radio and Education, former Labour minister
- Nicholas Purnellb. 1990AUAustralian rower
- Alexander Purnellb. 1995AUAustralian rower
- Ella Purnellb. 1996GBEnglish-born British actress (born 1996)
- Sonia PurnellBritish writer and journalist
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)
Attested in 25 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.4K | #4,197 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.2K | #4,163 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.7K | #4,243 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 3.9K | #2,041 |
| 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
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Purnell mean, and where does it come from?
- Different form of Parnell. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Purnell?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈpɝnəɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Purnell have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 8.4 thousand people named Purnell, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled purnell.
- How common is the name Purnell?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,441 people named Purnell in 2010, about 1 in 39 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Purnell?
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/purnellThe 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, “Purnell”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.