Wales
loc · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Wales is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in Australia. Recorded meaning: from the cas-sujet of Old French Galon or Old German Walo, probably from walh 'foreign'; first attested Ricardus filius Wales (Walis) 1175 P (Bk).
- AUAustralia
- GBUnited Kingdom
- USUnited States
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Australia (inferred from the name graph)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 340 (measured from records)
no count published
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
from the cas-sujet of Old French Galon or Old German Walo, probably from walh 'foreign'; first attested Ricardus filius Wales (Walis) 1175 P (Bk)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wales counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AU Australia | — | — | Wales | 131 |
| US United States | — | 5.1K | Wales | 340 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 4K | Wales | 181 |
| IN India | — | 21 | Wales | 20 |
| CA Canada | — | — | Wales | 101 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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)
Wales is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, One of the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom, formerly a principality.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Son of Wale.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In enm, Wales (a medieval principality and region of the Kingdom of England)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In kaw, return, reaction, countermove, repayment, retaliation, revenge
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Czech, Wales (a constituent country of the United Kingdom)
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)
- William Walesb. 1734GBBritish astronomer
- Maud of Walesb. 1869GBBritish princess (1869-1938), Queen consort of Norway from 1905 to 1938
- Ethel Walesb. 1878USactress (1878-1952)
- Hal Talioferrob. 1895USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor (1895–1980)
- Jimmy Walesb. 1966USco-founder of Wikipedia (born 1966)
- Wes Andersonb. 1969USnot in their usual nameAmerican filmmaker (born 1969)
- Catherine, Princess of Walesb. 1982GBmember of the British Royal Family and princess of Wales since 2022
- Prince Harry, Duke of Sussexb. 1984GBnot in their usual nameyounger son of Charles III of the United Kingdom and Diana, Princess of Wales
- Lachlan Walesb. 1997AUAustralian association football player
- Christine RohanUSnot in their usual nameformer spouse of Jimmy Wales
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 36 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5.1K | #6,602 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5K | #6,295 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.8K | #6,770 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 4K | #1,982 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 350 | #1,250 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 21 | #76,374 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Wales mean, and where does it come from?
- from the cas-sujet of Old French Galon or Old German Walo, probably from walh 'foreign'; first attested Ricardus filius Wales (Walis) 1175 P (Bk) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Wales have the most bearers?
- Wales is most frequently recorded in Australia, where it is most often spelled wales.
What do you want to know about Wales?
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/walesThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Wales”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.