Zela

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Zaire/Shaba: people group; also a Hebrew variant of Zoe

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

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

Zela is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Peru than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • PEPeru≈1 in 7.4K(inferred from the name graph)
  • ALAlbania≈1 in 3.7K
  • CZCzechia1 in 99K

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.

Peru (inferred from the name graph)

≈4,300 people, est.

Sources
54 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 3.7K (inferred from the name graph)

Albania, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Zaire/Shaba: people group; also a Hebrew variant of Zoe

Sources 1

  • African Names

Where in the world(measured from records)

Zela 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 Zela is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
PE Peru#938≈4,300 est.≈1 in 7.4K—Zela54
AL Albania—≈830 est.≈1 in 3.7K46——
BR Brazil—6461 in 328K646Zela31
IT Italy—≈290 est.≈1 in 217KlistedZela18
CZ Czechia—1081 in 99K108——
XK Kosovo—≈8 est.≈1 in 233K327——

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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search); the xinhua-italian-manual register; MVČR — living population register 2017; INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts). 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)

Zela is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Peru, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: English, Dutch

    Also written Zèlâ, Zėlã, Zelã

  • Turkish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Peru

    Also written Zelâ

  • Czech surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia, Peru, Poland, Slovakia

    Languages: Czech, Polish, Slovak

    Also written Žela, Zelã

  • Arabic surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, Algeria, Syria, Saudi Arabia

    Also written Zęlã, Zéla

  • Hindi surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, India

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Zelã

42 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)

Zela 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 tut-pro, to be awake; to live

    as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)

  • In Latin, second-person singular present active imperative of zēlō

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

  • In rkt, when (non-interrogative)

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

  • In Czech, inflection of zet:

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

  • In Xhosa, to represent

    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)

1850190019502000Stanislav Zela, b. 1893Nadja Zela, b. 1971Adrián Zela, b. 1989Sebastián Gonzales Zela, b. 1999

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)

FormalEstimada Sra. Zela,Dear Ms Zela, (English)
InformalHola Zela,Hi Zela, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 34 sources across 20 countries.

Official registers attesting Zela
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—646#13,509
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—108#15,555
CZ CzechiaKdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end)—108#7,473
IT Italy意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual)———

Reference works 3

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 Zela mean, and where does it come from?
Zaire/Shaba: people group; also a Hebrew variant of Zoe Recorded by African Names.
How do you pronounce Zela?
A machine transcription gives /sɛla/ (IPA) for Spanish.
In which country does Zela have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 4.3 thousand people named Zela in Peru, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zela.
How common is the name Zela?
In Brazil, the national register counted 646 people named Zela, about 1 in 328 thousand residents.
How common is Zela compared with other names?
In Peru, Zela is the 938th most common surname of 173,371 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Zela?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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

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, “Zela” — the 938th most common surname in Peru. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Zela parses inside a full name →