Wedel
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 1) 'ford in swampy region'; 2) 'wood'; 3) 'bundle, tuft'
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 14 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈveːdl̩/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Wedel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- DKDenmark1 in 17K(measured from records)
- SESweden1 in 85K
- CACanada≈1 in 90Kfew records
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)
- Record sources
- 255 (measured from records)
- 1 in 17K (inferred from the name graph)
2,830 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)1) 'ford in swampy region'; 2) 'wood'; 3) 'bundle, tuft'
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Wedel is found
(measured from records)Wedel 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 2,830 | 1 in 118K | 2.8K | Wedel | 255 |
| CA Canada | ≈460 est. | ≈1 in 90K | — | Wedel | 59 |
| DK Denmark | 343 | 1 in 17K | 343 | — | 2 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 287K | 34 | Wedel | 46 |
| PH Philippines | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 698K | — | Wedel | 4 |
| SE Sweden | 120 | 1 in 85K | 120 | — | 8 |
| NO Norway | 58 | 1 in 94K | 58 | — | 1 |
| CR Costa Rica | 44 | 1 in 116K | 44 | — | — |
2,830 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Karl Ernst Wedelb. 1813DEGerman businessman (1813-1902)
- Wilhelm von Wedell-Piesdorfb. 1837DEnot in their usual nameGerman politician (1837-1915)
- Dieter Wedelb. 1941DEGerman director and screenwriter (1941–2022)
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)25 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 14 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Wedel mean, and where does it come from?
- 1) 'ford in swampy region'; 2) 'wood'; 3) 'bundle, tuft' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Wedel?
- In German /ˈveːdl̩/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Wedel?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.8 thousand people named Wedel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wedel. After it come Canada, Denmark, United Kingdom and Philippines; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Wedel most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Wedel is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 17 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Wedel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,830 people named Wedel in 2010, about 1 in 118 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Wedel?
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/wedelThe 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, “Wedel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.