Shiel
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A shepherd's hut or shieling
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 7 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/ʃiːl/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Shiel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- ESSpain1 in 3.8M(measured from records)
- SESweden1 in 15Kas Schill
- NONorway1 in 76Kas Schill
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 Shiel 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 10 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.8M (inferred from the name graph)
2,923 named Schill, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Spain
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Shill in IN India.
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)A shepherd's hut or shieling.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Shiel 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 | 2,923as Schill | 1 in 114K | 2.9K | Shiel | 10 |
| SE Sweden | 683as Schill | 1 in 15K | 683 | — | — |
| IN India | 197as Shill | 1 in 6.7M | 197 | Shill | 5 |
| AR Argentina | 163as Schill | 1 in 279K | 163 | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | 119as Schill | 1 in 145K | 119 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 96as Schill | 1 in 88K | 96 | — | — |
| NO Norway | 72as Schill | 1 in 76K | 72 | — | — |
| ES Spain | 13 | 1 in 3.8M | 13 | — | — |
2,923 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling schill. 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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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)Shiel 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 English, Early Irish name mentioned by Woulfe.
as a nameIrish first names
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)- Richard Lalor Sheilb. 1791GBnot in their usual nameBritish politician; (1791-1851)
- Justin Sheilb. 1803GBnot in their usual nameIrish diplomat and soldier
- Laurence Sheilb. 1814IEnot in their usual nameCatholic bishop (1814–1872)
- George K. Shielb. 1825USAmerican politician (1825-1893)
- Bernard James Sheilb. 1888USnot in their usual nameAmerican Catholic bishop (1888–1969)
- Sheilah Grahamb. 1904USnot in their usual nameAmerican gossip columnist (1904–1988)
- John Shielb. 1917GBEnglish footballer (1917-2013)
- Derek Shielb. 1939IEIrish artist and writer
- Kate Lyn Sheilb. 1985USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Douglas SheilNOnot in their usual nameresearcher
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)Evidence
(measured from records)14 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 655 | #32,984 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 623 | #38,279 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 557 | #39,486 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 13 | #105,312 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 4 | #118,617 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (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 Shiel mean, and where does it come from?
- A shepherd's hut or shieling. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Shiel?
- In English /ʃiːl/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Shiel have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.9 thousand people named Schill, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Shiel most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Shiel is densest in Spain — about 1 in 3.8 million people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Shiel?
- In Spain, the national register counted 13 people named Shiel, about 1 in 3.8 million residents.
What do you want to know about Shiel?
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/shielThe 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, “Shiel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.