Nilus
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Obsolete form of Nile
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/naɪ̯ləs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nilus is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- RURussia≈1 in 115Kas Нил(inferred from the name graph)
- ESSpain1 in 4.1Kas Nil
- USUnited States1 in 8.9Kas Neal
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Nilus itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 117 (measured from records)
- 1 in 4.1K (inferred from the name graph)
37,392 named Neal, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Spain, as Nil
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Neal in US United States, Нил in RU Russia and Nil in ES Spain.
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)
Obsolete form of Nile.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nilus 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 | 37,392as Neal | 1 in 8.9K | 92K | Neal | 45 |
| ES Spain | 12,328as Nil | 1 in 4.1K | 12K | Nil | 6 |
| RU Russia | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 115K | #578 | Нил | 117 |
| DK Denmark | 654as Neel | 1 in 9K | 630 | — | — |
| BR Brazil | 586as Nil | 1 in 361K | 586 | — | 1 |
| MK North Macedonia | 196as Нил | 1 in 11K | 162 | — | 1 |
| GY Guyana | 37as Neal | 1 in 20K | 37 | — | — |
37,392 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); State Statistical Office — living population names; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Nilus is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, god of the Nile River
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In grc, Ancient Greek: god of the Nile River
as a nameAfrican Names
In Latin, Nile (river)
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)
- Nilus of Sinaib. 365TREgyptian saint
- Nilus the Youngerb. 910ITItalian saint
- Nilus Cabasilasb. 1298GRByzantine bishop
- Nilus of Sorab. 1433RURussian theologian and saint
- Nil Stolobenskyb. 1500RUnot in their usual nameRussian monk, canonized by the Orthodox church
- Henry Nilus Thompsonb. 1867GBBritish colonial forestry official (1867–1938)
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 9 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 3 | #14,444 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 2 | #592 |
Reference works 3
- Wikipedia given-name 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
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 Nilus mean, and where does it come from?
- Obsolete form of Nile. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Nilus?
- A machine transcription gives /naɪ̯ləs/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Nilus a male or female name?
- Nilus is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Nilus have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 37 thousand people named Neal, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Nilus most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Nilus itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Spain's: the national register counts about 1 in 4.1 thousand people named Nil.
- How common is the name Nilus?
- In the United States, the national register counted 37,392 people named Neal in 2020, about 1 in 8.9 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Nilus?
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/nilusThe 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, “Nilus”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.