Vela

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Spanish: (Visigothic) origin. The name represents a reduced from of Vigila, from a short form of the various cpd names with a Vendricks see Vaandrager Vendryes Erench: habitation name from a place in Quercy, a

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/bela/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

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

rarermore common
  • ESSpain1 in 3K(measured from records)
  • USUnited States1 in 13K
  • ECEcuador1 in 3K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

25,414 people, 2010

Sources
383 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 3.0K (inferred from the name graph)

Spain

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

(Visigothic) origin. The name represents a reduced from of Vigila, from a short form of the various cpd names with a Vendricks see Vaandrager Vendryes Erench: habitation name from a place in Quercy, apparently so called from LL Venerianus (fundus) ‘(estate) of Venerius’, a personal name derived from that of the goddess Venus (cf. Vendrell). Venediktov see Bennett 637 Verhaar Venezia

Sources 1

  • The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Vela is read(measured from records)

Vela is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • Spanish68%

    (Visigothic) origin. The name represents a reduced from of Vigila, from a short form of the various cpd names with a Vendricks see Vaandrager Vendryes Erench: habitation name from a place in Quercy, apparently so called from LL Venerianus (fundus) ‘(estate) of Venerius’, a personal name derived from that of the goddess Venus (cf. Vendrell). Venediktov see Bennett 637 Verhaar Venezia

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

    candle

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

  • English21%

    plural of velum

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

    constellation

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Vela 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 Vela is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—25,4141 in 13K25KVela383
ES Spain—16,9281 in 3K17KVela77
EC Ecuador—5,5491 in 3K5.5KVela25
AR Argentina—4,7491 in 9.6K4.7K—2
UY Uruguay—3791 in 8.9K379——
SG Singapore#967———Vela11

25,414 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); INEC — civil registry names; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)

Vela is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Peru, Spain

    Also written Vêlã, Véla, Velã

  • French surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Peru, Spain

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Véla, Vēlã, Vélà, Velã

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Velá, Vēlā, Véla

  • Croatian surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Croatia, Bulgaria, Peru

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian

    Also written Вела, Velã

71 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)

Vela 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.

  • Prominent one.

    as a nameThe African book of names

  • In Portuguese, candle, sail, spark-plug

    as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese

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)

1400160018002000Blasco Núñez Vela, b. 1490Mari Carmen García Vela, b. 1942Rodolfo Neri Vela, b. 1952Rosie Vela, b. 1952Filemon Vela, b. 1963Cindy Vela, b. 1979Alejandro Vela, b. 1984Carlos Vela, b. 1989Dani Nieto, b. 1991Josh Vela, b. 1993

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)

FormalEstimado/a Vela,Dear Vela, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Vela,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 59 sources across 31 countries.

Official registers attesting Vela
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201025K#1,396
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202024K#1,431
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200021K#1,603
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—17K#312
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—17K#312
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names20245.5K#705
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—4.7K—
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—379—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)202445—
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

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 Vela mean, and where does it come from?
(Visigothic) origin. The name represents a reduced from of Vigila, from a short form of the various cpd names with a Vendricks see Vaandrager Vendryes Erench: habitation name from a place in Quercy, a… Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
How do you pronounce Vela?
A machine transcription gives /bela/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What are other forms of the name Vela?
In the etymology graph, Velo, Velador and Veil are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Vela have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 25 thousand people named Vela, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled vela.
Where is Vela most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Vela is densest in Spain — about 1 in 3.0 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Vela?
In the United States, the national register counted 25,414 people named Vela in 2010, about 1 in 13 thousand residents.
How common is Vela compared with other names?
In Singapore, Vela is the 967th most common surname of 78,292 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Vela?

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

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, “Vela” — the 967th most common surname in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Vela parses inside a full name →