Sarel

given name · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Sarel is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Old English Sarlo, Sarle and Serle, from Anglo-Scandinavian or Norman Sarli and Sarle, ultimately from Old Norse. The given name sense is derived from Afrikaans Sarel.

rarermore common
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 4.2K(inferred from the name graph)
  • ILIsrael≈1 in 84K
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 239K

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.

South Africa (inferred from the name graph)

≈14,000 people, est.

Sources
74 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 4.2K (inferred from the name graph)

South Africa, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Sarel: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Sarel
  1. Old EnglishSarlo(measured from records)
  2. Anglo-Scandinavianor(measured from records)
  3. OldNorse(measured from records)
  4. AfrikaansSarel(measured from records)

From Old English Sarlo, Sarle and Serle, from Anglo-Scandinavian or Norman Sarli and Sarle, ultimately from Old Norse. The given name sense is derived from Afrikaans Sarel.

Sources 2

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wiktionary

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Sarel 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 Sarel is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ZA South Africa#800≈14,000 est.≈1 in 4.2K—Sarel50
IL Israel—≈100 est.≈1 in 84K—Sarel14
US United States—≈98 est.≈1 in 3.4MlistedSarel74
AU Australia—≈44 est.≈1 in 573K—Sarel40
GB United Kingdom—≈27 est.≈1 in 2.4M60Sarel36
NL Netherlands—261 in 665K26Sarel3
NZ New Zealand—≈21 est.≈1 in 239K—Sarel13

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: the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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)

Sarel is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, South Africa, United States

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Särel

  • Spanish given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Mexico, South Africa, United States, Peru

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Sarél

  • French given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in South Africa, France, Congo - Kinshasa, United States

    Also written Särel

  • Hebrew given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Israel, United States, Morocco, Qatar

    Also written שראל, שר-אל, Schrall, Sar-El

  • Turkish given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, South Africa, United States

    Also written Särel, Şarel

43 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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1850190019502000Ethel Sarel Barton Gepp, b. 1864R. S. Uytenbogaardt, b. 1933SP Marais, b. 1989

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 12 sources across 7 countries.

Official registers attesting Sarel
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)200260#45,461
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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

What does the name Sarel mean, and where does it come from?
From Old English Sarlo, Sarle and Serle, from Anglo-Scandinavian or Norman Sarli and Sarle, ultimately from Old Norse. The given name sense is derived from Afrikaans Sarel. Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary.
Is Sarel a male or female name?
Sarel 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.
In which country does Sarel have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 14 thousand people named Sarel in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sarel.
How common is the name Sarel?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 26 people named Sarel, about 1 in 665 thousand residents.
How common is Sarel compared with other names?
In South Africa, Sarel is the 800th most common given name of 189,620 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Sarel?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Sarel” — the 800th most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Sarel parses inside a full name →