Seela
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/silə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Seela is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Finland than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Selim. Originally apparently a male name (especially with a short vowel Sela), but adopted as a female name (because of its similarity to names like Saara, Leena, Eila, Saila, etc.).
- FIFinland1 in 2K(measured from records)
- BHBahrain≈1 in 76K
- KWKuwait≈1 in 96K
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.
- Finland (measured from records)
- Sources
- 13 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.0K (inferred from the name graph)
2,805 people
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From Selim. Originally apparently a male name (especially with a short vowel Sela), but adopted as a female name (because of its similarity to names like Saara, Leena, Eila, Saila, etc.).
Sources 2
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Seela 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Finland | 2,805 | 1 in 2K | 2.9K | Seela | 12 |
| EG Egypt | ≈82 est. | ≈1 in 1.3M | — | Seela | 8 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | ≈61 est. | ≈1 in 560K | — | Seela | 8 |
| US United States | ≈41 est. | ≈1 in 8M | 150 | Seela | 13 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | ≈38 est. | ≈1 in 266K | — | Seela | 8 |
| KW Kuwait | ≈31 est. | ≈1 in 96K | — | Seela | 5 |
| LY Libya | ≈25 est. | ≈1 in 280K | — | Seela | 3 |
| BH Bahrain | ≈20 est. | ≈1 in 76K | — | Seela | 2 |
2,805 people counted by DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register). 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: DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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)
Seela 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 Northern Sotho, liquid
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)
- Seela Sellab. 1936FIFinnish actress
- Seela MisraUSAmerican musician
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 18 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 150 | #121,361 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 141 | #122,314 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 114 | #135,837 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 30 | #38,027 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 Seela mean, and where does it come from?
- From Selim. Originally apparently a male name (especially with a short vowel Sela), but adopted as a female name (because of its similarity to names like Saara, Leena, Eila, Saila, etc.). Recorded by Wiktionary and Nordic Names.
- How do you pronounce Seela?
- A machine transcription gives /silə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Seela a male or female name?
- Seela is a female 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 Seela have the most bearers?
- In Finland, the national register counted about 2.8 thousand people named Seela, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled seela.
- Where is Seela most common?
- Seela is densest in Finland, where the national register counts about 1 in 2.0 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Seela?
- In Finland, the national register counted 2,805 people named Seela, about 1 in 2.0 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Seela?
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/seelaThe 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, “Seela”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.