Rahel
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Rachel (biblical character)
A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 34 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025
/ˈʁaː(h)əl/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Rahel is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Libya it is the 34th most common given name.
- TZTanzania≈1 in 770(inferred from the name graph)
- CHSwitzerland≈1 in 910
- ETEthiopia≈1 in 1.1K
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 Rahel 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- #294 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 649 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 765 (inferred from the name graph)
493,726 named Rachel, 2020
of 15M given names, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Tanzania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Rachel in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 4 more and ራሔል in ET Ethiopia.
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)Rachel (biblical character)
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Rahel 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 | #138 | 493,726as Rachel | 1 in 674 | 493K | Rachel | 649 |
| GB United Kingdom | #82 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 457 | 63 | Rachel | 398 |
| ET Ethiopia | #178 | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | listed | ራሔል | 34 |
| PH Philippines | #299 | ≈99,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Rachel | 161 |
| TZ Tanzania | #128 | ≈90,000 est. | ≈1 in 765 | — | Rahel | 42 |
| AU Australia | #84 | ≈56,000 est. | ≈1 in 486 | 106 | Rachel | 307 |
| IL Israel | #829 | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 509 | — | Rachel | 135 |
| NZ New Zealand | #72 | ≈9,300 est. | ≈1 in 568 | — | Rachel | 209 |
| LY Libya | #34 | ≈59 est. | ≈1 in 125K | — | Rachel | 10 |
493,726 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present). 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)Rahel 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 German, Rahel Vamhagen von Ense, deutsche Schriftstellerin
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In Estonian, a female given name of biblical origin, variant of Raahel (“Rachel”)
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)- Rahel Varnhagen von Enseb. 1771DEGerman writer
- Rahel Hirschb. 1870DEGerman doctor (1870-1953)
- Rahel Strausb. 1880DEGerman-Jewish physician, feminist and writer
- Rahel Sanzarab. 1894DEGerman writer (1894–1936)
- Felice Schragenheimb. 1922DEnot in their usual nameLesbian journalist, Resistance member, Holocaust victim (1922-1944)
- Rahel Jaeggib. 1966DEGerman professor
- Rahel Azariab. 1977ILIsraeli politician
- Rahel Freyb. 1986CHSwiss racing driver
- Rahel Vigdozchikb. 1989ILIsraeli rhythmic gymnast
- Rahel RomahnAUAustralian actor
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)66 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 34 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.2K | #6,916 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 49 | #6,916 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 13 | — |
| AU Australia | SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present) | 1999 | 1 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2024 | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Rahel mean, and where does it come from?
- Rachel (biblical character) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Rahel?
- In the etymology graph, Rachel, Raquel and Rachael are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Rahel?
- It depends on the language: in German /ˈʁaː(h)əl/ (Wiktionary); in Swahili /ɾɑhel/; in Indonesian /rahəl/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Is Rahel a male or female name?
- Rahel is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: United States (Census Bureau, 2020), Norway (SSB), Estonia (Statistics Estonia) and Austria (Statistik Austria, 2024), among others.
- In which country does Rahel have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 494 thousand people named Rachel, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Rahel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 493,726 people named Rachel in 2020, about 1 in 674 residents.
- How common is Rahel compared with other names?
- In the United States, Rahel is the 138th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rahel?
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/rahelThe 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, “Rahel” — the 138th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.