Neal
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Olr/Gael Niáll ‘champion’, later latinized as Nigellus; first attested Willelmus filius Nigelli 1086 DB (Bk)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/niːl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Neal is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 2.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 3.6K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 3.9K
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)
- #965 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 528 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈370,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Olr/Gael Niáll ‘champion’, later latinized as Nigellus; first attested Willelmus filius Nigelli 1086 DB (Bk)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Neal, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Neal 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 | — | ≈370,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.8K | — | Neal | 27 |
| US United States | #266 | 91,694 | 1 in 3.6K | 92K | Neal | 528 |
| GB United Kingdom | #381 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | 6 | Neal | 260 |
| IT Italy | #649 | ≈8,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.8K | 2 | Neal | 35 |
| CA Canada | #431 | ≈7,800 est. | ≈1 in 4.8K | 1 | Neal | 193 |
| NZ New Zealand | #246 | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 12 | Neal | 97 |
| SG Singapore | #310 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | Neal | 35 |
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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Neal 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, surname in S and central England, derived from ME forms of the given name such as Neel. Neels see Corneille Neely see McNeilly Vars.: Neale, Neall. Patr.: Nelson. Neenan see Noonan Nealon see Neil Neep see Neape
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, someone who lived at a corner, from na on, at + ugol cor¬ ner + -nik suffix of agent nouns. surname in S and central England, derived from ME forms of the given name such as Neel.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, A surname from Irish [in turn originating as a patronymic] derived from Niall.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
reduced form of McNeal (see McNeil).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
English: variant of NEIL , influenced by the surname in this spelling.
as a word
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)
- Tom Nealb. 1914USAmerican actor (1914–1972)
- Patricia Nealb. 1926USAmerican stage and film actress (1926-2010)
- Fannie Flaggb. 1944USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress, comedian and author
- Edwin Nealb. 1945USAmerican actor
- Richard Nealb. 1949USAmerican politician (born 1949)
- Phil Nealb. 1951GBEnglish footballer (born 1951)
- Elise Nealb. 1966USAmerican actress
- Dylan Nealb. 1969CACanadian/American actor (born 1969)
- Diane Nealb. 1976USAmerican actress
- Carthew Nealb. 1979NZNew Zealand television producer
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)
Attested in 80 sources across 40 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 37K | #1,106 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 182 | #1,106 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 82 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1976 | 12 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 6 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 1996 | 6 | #287 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1986 | 5 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2003 | 3 | #299 |
| IT Italy | ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend) | 2023 | 2 | #4,459 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2022 | 1 | #2,090 |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
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 Neal mean, and where does it come from?
- from Olr/Gael Niáll ‘champion’, later latinized as Nigellus; first attested Willelmus filius Nigelli 1086 DB (Bk) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Neal?
- A machine transcription gives /niːl/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Neal have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 368 thousand people named Neal in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled neal.
- How common is the name Neal?
- In the United States, the national register counted 91,694 people named Neal in 2010, about 1 in 3.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Neal compared with other names?
- In New Zealand, Neal is the 246th most common surname of 87,225 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Neal?
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/nealThe 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, “Neal” — the 246th most common surname in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.