Russel
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From Rousel, literally ‘little Rouse’, an Anglo-Norman nickname for a red-haired person
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɹʌsəl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Russel is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 3.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 11K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 24K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 389 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈41,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Philippines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From Rousel, literally ‘little Rouse’, an Anglo-Norman nickname for a red-haired person.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Russel, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Russel 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | Russel | 11 |
| PH Philippines | #787 | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | Russel | 116 |
| US United States | — | 10,399 | 1 in 32K | 10K | Russel | 389 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Russel | 59 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 27K | 4 | Russel | 161 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 24K | 3 | Russel | 137 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈260 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Russel | 31 |
| NZ New Zealand | #834 | ≈260 est. | ≈1 in 19K | 11 | Russel | 54 |
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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–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)
Russel is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from OFr rous-el, a diminutive of rous ‘red’, also used as a personal name; first attested Russel c1095 Bury (Suffolk)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A surname transferred from the nickname, a rather rare spelling variant of Russell.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Old French; red-haired, fox-like
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- Alfred Russel Wallaceb. 1823GBBritish naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist (1823–1913)
- J. Russel Robinsonb. 1892USUnited States ragtime and dixieland jazz pianist and composer (1892-1963)
- Russel Crouseb. 1893USAmerican playwright (1893-1966)
- Russel Wrightb. 1904USAmerican designer (1904-1976)
- Russel L. Honoréb. 1947USRetired Lieutenant General in the United States Army
- Russel Friendb. 1950USAmerican television producer and writer
- Russell Jamesb. 1962AUnot in their usual nameAustralian photographer
- Russel Normanb. 1967AUNew Zealand politician
- Russel Arnoldb. 1973LKSri Lankan cricketer
- Russel SimmonsUSAmerican businessman
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)
Attested in 70 sources across 37 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 4.6K | #6,781 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4.2K | #7,894 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.4K | #9,211 |
Reference works 7
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
- Is Russel a male or female name?
- Russel is a male 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.
- What does the name Russel mean, and where does it come from?
- From Rousel, literally ‘little Rouse’, an Anglo-Norman nickname for a red-haired person. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Russel?
- A machine transcription gives /ɹʌsəl/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Russel have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 41 thousand people named Russel in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled russel.
- How common is the name Russel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 10,399 people named Russel in 2020, about 1 in 32 thousand residents.
- How common is Russel compared with other names?
- In the Philippines, Russel is the 787th most common given name of 486,299 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Russel?
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/russelThe 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, “Russel” — the 787th most common given name in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.