Wedel
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 1) 'ford in swampy region'; 2) 'wood'; 3) 'bundle, tuft'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Wedel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 118K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 17K
- FIFinland≈1 in 34K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 255 (measured from records)
- 1 in 17K (inferred from the name graph)
≈29,000 people, est.
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'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 47K | — | Wedel | 2 |
| US United States | 2,830 | 1 in 118K | 2.8K | Wedel | 255 |
| CA Canada | ≈410 est. | ≈1 in 91K | — | Wedel | 59 |
| DK Denmark | 343 | 1 in 17K | 343 | — | 2 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 295K | 34 | Wedel | 46 |
| FI Finland | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | Wedel | 3 |
| SE Sweden | 120 | 1 in 85K | 120 | — | 8 |
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). 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)
- Georg Wolfgang Wedelb. 1645DEGerman professor of surgery, botany, theoretical and practical medicine, and chemistry (1645-1721)
- Carl Heinrich von Wedelb. 1712DEPrussian general (1712-1782)
- Karl Ernst Wedelb. 1813DEGerman businessman (1813-1902)
- Wilhelm von Wedell-Piesdorfb. 1837DEnot in their usual nameGerman politician (1837-1915)
- Karl von Wedelb. 1842DEGerman politician (1842-1919)
- Waldo Rudolph Wedelb. 1908USAmerican archaeologist (1908–1996)
- Dieter Wedelb. 1941DEGerman director and screenwriter (1941–2022)
- Michel Wedelb. 1957NLDutch karateka
- Matt Wedelb. 2000USAmerican paleontologist
- Jamie Wedelactor
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 25 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.8K | #11,174 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.7K | #10,708 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.6K | #11,503 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 343 | #1,339 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 120 | #6,237 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 34 | #64,689 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 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.
- In which country does Wedel have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 29 thousand people named Wedel in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wedel.
- 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 China 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 2026-10-10.