Faîl
surname · Latin script
Faîl is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English failen, borrowed from Anglo-Norman faillir, from Vulgar Latin *fallire, alteration of Latin fallere (“to deceive, disappoint”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰāl- (“to lie, deceive”).
- CZCzechia1 in 274K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 441K
- ARArgentina1 in 464K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. 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
- 47 (measured from records)
- 1 in 274K (inferred from the name graph)
754 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Czechia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Fail in US United States.
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)- Middle Englishfailen(measured from records)
- Anglo-Normanfaillir(measured from records)
- Vulgar Latin*fallire(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*bʰāl-“to lie“to lie, deceive”(measured from records)
From Middle English failen, borrowed from Anglo-Norman faillir, from Vulgar Latin *fallire, alteration of Latin fallere (“to deceive, disappoint”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰāl- (“to lie, deceive”) or Proto-Indo-European *sgʷʰh₂el- (“to stumble”). Compare Dutch feilen, falen (“to fail, miss”), German fehlen (“to fail, miss, lack”), Danish fejle (“to fail, err”), Swedish fela (“to fail, be wanting, do wrong”), Icelandic feila (“to fail”), Spanish fallar (“to fail, miss”).
Cited for this meaning 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Faîl 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 | 754 | 1 in 441K | 1.2K | Fail | 18 |
| BR Brazil | 183 | 1 in 1.2M | 183 | — | — |
| AR Argentina | 98 | 1 in 464K | 98 | — | — |
| CZ Czechia | 39 | 1 in 274K | 39 | — | — |
| ES Spain | 27 | 1 in 1.9M | 27 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 5 | 1 in 1.7M | 5 | — | — |
754 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); MVČR — living population register 2017; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Faîl mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English failen, borrowed from Anglo-Norman faillir, from Vulgar Latin *fallire, alteration of Latin fallere (“to deceive, disappoint”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰāl- (“to lie, deceive”)… Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary.
- In which country does Faîl have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 754 people named Faîl, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fail.
- Where is Faîl most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Faîl is densest in Czechia — about 1 in 274 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Faîl?
- In the United States, the national register counted 754 people named Faîl in 2010, about 1 in 441 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Faîl?
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/fa%C3%AElThe 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, “Faîl”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.