Smale
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from OE smæl ‘small, slender, thin’; first attested William Smale 1221 ElyA (C)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈsmeɪɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Smale is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 51K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 63K
- CACanada≈1 in 84K
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.
- United Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 243 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 25K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,300 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Belize, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from OE smæl ‘small, slender, thin’; first attested William Smale 1221 ElyA (C)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Smale 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 51K | 2.4K | Smale | 139 |
| US United States | — | 843 | 1 in 395K | 1.1K | Smale | 243 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈570 est. | ≈1 in 99K | — | Smale | 24 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈450 est. | ≈1 in 84K | — | Smale | 102 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈400 est. | ≈1 in 63K | — | Smale | 89 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 361 | 1 in 48K | 361 | Smale | 28 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | Smale | 43 |
| BZ Belize | #731 | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Smale | 1 |
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 2000; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). 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)
Smale 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, different form of Small
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In Swedish, definite natural masculine singular of smal
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian Nynorsk, sheep
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)
- Lionel Smaleb. 1878AUAustralian rules footballer
- Douglas Smaleb. 1916GBEnglish footballer (1916-2006)
- Geoff Smaleb. 1924NZNew Zealand yacht racer
- Stephen Smaleb. 1930USAmerican mathematician
- Ted Smaleb. 1932CACanadian football player
- Alison Smaleb. 1955GBBritish journalist
- A. Jackson-Smaleb. 1963scientist
- Holly Smaleb. 1981GBBritish writer (born 1981)
- Alan SmaleGBUK-born astronomer and author (1960-), in US from 1988
- Mark C. SmaleNZecological researcher in New Zealand
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)
Attested in 14 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 2.4K | #3,102 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.1K | #21,727 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.1K | #24,443 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 843 | #28,333 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 361 | #5,597 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Smale mean, and where does it come from?
- from OE smæl ‘small, slender, thin’; first attested William Smale 1221 ElyA (C) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Smale?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈsmeɪɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Smale have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.3 thousand people named Smale in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled smale.
- How common is the name Smale?
- In the United States, the national register counted 843 people named Smale in 2010, about 1 in 395 thousand residents.
- How common is Smale compared with other names?
- In Belize, Smale is the 731st most common surname of 11,408 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Smale?
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/smaleThe 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, “Smale” — the 731st most common surname in Belize. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.