Tobel

surname · Latin script

Meaning: name for someone who lived near a ravine or gorge, from MHG southern dial, tobel gorge

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 7 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020

/ˈtoːbl̩/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary

Say it inExplore pronunciation →

Tobel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

  • DEGermany≈1 in 1Mfew records(inferred from the name graph)
  • PHPhilippines≈1 in 1.8Mfew records
  • FRFrance≈1 in 2M

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). 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)

138 people, 2010

Record sources
121 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 254K (inferred from the name graph)

Belgium, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)Make your nomograph ✦

Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

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)

name for someone who lived near a ravine or gorge, from MHG southern dial, tobel gorge. Vars.: Ger.: Tobler (esp. Swiss); Zumtobel; Dobel.

Cited for this meaning 1

  • A dictionary of surnames

Where the surname Tobel is found

(measured from records)

Tobel 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 Tobel is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States1381 in 2.4M150Tobel121
DZ Algeria≈110 est.≈1 in 420K—Tobel4
DE Germany≈84 est.≈1 in 996K—Tobel26
PH Philippines≈63 est.≈1 in 1.8M—Tobel5
SY Syria≈48 est.≈1 in 513K—Tobel6
BE Belgium≈47 est.≈1 in 254K—Tobel7
IE Ireland≈17 est.≈1 in 309K—Tobel1
JM Jamaica≈6 est.≈1 in 443K—Tobel1

138 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 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 names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

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

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, United States, Guatemala, Venezuela

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Töbel

  • French surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium

    Also written Tóbel

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Tóbel

  • Hindi surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India

    Also written Tóbel

  • Hungarian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Hungary

    Also written Tóbel

20 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.

Other recorded senses

(measured from records)

Tobel is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, gorge, ravine

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In German, Toponymischer Familienname: zu mhd. tobel 'Schlucht, Tal; Geländevertiefung'; stark gestreut, daher nicht kartiert. 30 Bearer.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte

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)

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)
FormalDear Mr Tobel,
InformalHi Tobel,

Evidence

(measured from records)

14 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 7 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the name Tobel come from?
name for someone who lived near a ravine or gorge, from MHG southern dial, tobel gorge. Vars.: Ger.: Tobler (esp. Swiss); Zumtobel; Dobel. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
How do you pronounce Tobel?
It depends on the language: in German /ˈtoːbl̩/ (Wiktionary); in Spanish /tobel/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
What does the name Tobel mean?
Recorded meaning: name for someone who lived near a ravine or gorge, from MHG southern dial, tobel gorge.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Tobel?
In the United States, the national register counted about 138 people named Tobel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tobel. After it come Algeria, Germany, Philippines and Syria; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Tobel?
In the United States, the national register counted 138 people named Tobel in 2010, about 1 in 2.4 million residents.

What do you want to know about Tobel?

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

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

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, “Tobel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Tobel parses inside a full name →