Rudel

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in German: from a short form of Rudolf or another Rudolf- name (Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung)

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 21 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020

/ɾudɛl/(machine-generated) Spanish · model-generated

Say it inExplore pronunciation →

Rudel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country. In American Samoa it is the 44th most common surname.

  • DEGermany≈1 in 50K(inferred from the name graph)
  • SISlovenia1 in 84K
  • ARArgentina1 in 143K

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 Rudel itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Germany (inferred from the name graph)

≈1,700 people, est.

Record sources
146 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 4.7K (inferred from the name graph)

American Samoa, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)Make your nomograph ✦

Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

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.

How to pronounce Rudel

  • Spanish:/ɾudɛl/(machine-generated) model-generated
  • German:/ˈʁuːdl̩/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary

Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

from a short form of Rudolf or another Rudolf- name

Cited for this meaning 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

How Rudel is read

(measured from records)

Rudel is one spelling over 4 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.

  • English36%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Rudel in English.

  • Spanish22%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Rudel in Spanish.

  • German21%

    from a short form of Rudolf or another Rudolf- name

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

    pack (of wolves, dogs, hyenas etc.)

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

  • French12%

    Variante courte de Rudolf/Rodolphe.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

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 the surname Rudel is found

(measured from records)

Rudel 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 Rudel is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany—≈1,700 est.≈1 in 50KlistedRudel93
PK Pakistan—≈540 est.≈1 in 465K—Rudel1
FR France—≈330 est.≈1 in 207K21—1
AR Argentina—3171 in 143K317—1
US United States—2891 in 1.2M364Rudel146
SI Slovenia—251 in 84K25—2
AS American Samoa#44≈10 est.≈1 in 4.7K—Rudel1
BB Barbados—≈4 est.≈1 in 69K—Rudel1

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; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)

Rudel is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Spain, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Rüdel

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States

    Also written Rüdel

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Rüdel

  • Arabic surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Arab Emirates, Egypt

    Also written Rüdel

  • Swahili surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States

    Also written Rüdel

  • Hindi surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States

    Also written Rüdel

  • Bangla surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Bangladesh

    Also written Rüdel

39 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)

Rudel is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Polish, synonym of ster (“helm, rudder”)

    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)
100012001400160018002000Jaufré Rudel, b. 1000Hans-Ulrich Rudel, b. 1916Julius Rudel, b. 1921
  • Jaufré Rudelb. 1000FRprince of Blaye and troubadour
  • Hans-Ulrich Rudelb. 1916DEGerman World War II Stuka pilot and neo-Nazi activist (1916–1982)
  • Julius Rudelb. 1921USAmerican conductor and impresario (1921-2014)

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)
FormalDear Mr Rudel,
InformalHi Rudel,

Evidence

(measured from records)

35 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 21 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Rudel mean, and where does it come from?
from a short form of Rudolf or another Rudolf- name Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
How do you pronounce Rudel?
It depends on the language: in Spanish /ɾudɛl/; in German /ˈʁuːdl̩/ (Wiktionary). Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Rudel?
Mondonomo estimates about 1.7 thousand people named Rudel in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rudel. After it come Pakistan, France, Argentina and United States; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Rudel?
In Argentina, the national register counted 317 people named Rudel, about 1 in 143 thousand residents.
How common is Rudel compared with other names?
In American Samoa, Rudel is the 44th most common surname of 292 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Rudel?

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

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, “Rudel” — the 44th most common surname in American Samoa. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Rudel parses inside a full name →