Waal
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Dutch: the Waal (a river and distributary of the Rhine that runs through the provinces of Gelderland and South Holland, Netherlands)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ʋaːl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Waal is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country.
- NONorway1 in 19K(measured from records)
- NLNetherlands1 in 45K
- BRBrazil1 in 3.1M
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.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- Sources
- 133 (measured from records)
- 1 in 19K (inferred from the name graph)
384 people, 2007
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
the Waal (a river and distributary of the Rhine that runs through the provinces of Gelderland and South Holland, Netherlands)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Waal is read(measured from records)
Waal is one spelling over 3 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.
- Dutch41%
the Waal (a river and distributary of the Rhine that runs through the provinces of Gelderland and South Holland, Netherlands)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English31%
river, Netherlands
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- German7.1%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Waal in German.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Waal 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | 384 | 1 in 45K | 384 | Waal | 61 |
| NO Norway | 292 | 1 in 19K | 292 | Waal | 9 |
| BR Brazil | 69 | 1 in 3.1M | 69 | — | — |
| ZA South Africa | — | — | — | Waal | 48 |
| US United States | — | — | listed | Waal | 133 |
| AU Australia | — | — | — | Waal | 76 |
384 people counted by CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007), 2007. 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: the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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)
Waal 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 hrx, choice
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In yol, well
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)
- Nic Waalb. 1905NONorwegian Righteous Among the Nations
- René Waalb. 1915SRSurinamese musician and theater maker
- Helge Waalb. 1940NONorwegian physician and psychiatrist
- Cees Waalb. 1943NLDutch politician (1943–2011)
- Marlène Waalb. 1954SRSurinamese female singer
- Emil de Waalb. 1967Danish musician
- Giovanni Waalb. 1989SRSurinamese association football player
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 8 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 384 | #5,234 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 292 | #5,273 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 69 | #83,359 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Waal mean, and where does it come from?
- the Waal (a river and distributary of the Rhine that runs through the provinces of Gelderland and South Holland, Netherlands) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Waal?
- A machine transcription gives /ʋaːl/ (IPA) for Dutch.
- In which country does Waal have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 384 people named Waal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled waal.
- Where is Waal most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Waal is densest in Norway — about 1 in 19 thousand people — even though Netherlands holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Waal?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 384 people named Waal in 2007, about 1 in 45 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Waal?
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/waalThe 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, “Waal”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.