Tella
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A traditional beer from Ethiopia and Eritrea, brewed from various grains
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈtɛɫə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Tella is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 12K(inferred from the name graph)
- FIFinland1 in 9.5K
- ITItaly≈1 in 38K
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 177 (measured from records)
- 1 in 9.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈18,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A traditional beer from Ethiopia and Eritrea, brewed from various grains.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Tella 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.
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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Tella is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Norwegian Bokmål, split infinitive of telle (non-standard since 2005)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Galician, roof tile
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)
- Mercedes Tellab. 1868ESSpanish writer
- Alfredo Tellab. 1873ESSpanish journalist
- Heli Rolando de Tella y Cantosb. 1888ESSpanish general (1888–1967)
- Francesc Tella i Maciàb. 1948ESSpanish politician
- María José Falcón y Tellab. 1950ESjurist
- Juha Tellab. 1960FIFinnish biathlete
- Sylvia Tellab. 1960GBBritish singer
- Adeyinka Tellab. 1972NGNigerian librarian
- Nathan Tellab. 1999GBEnglish association football player (born 1999)
- Sergi Balcells BalsESnot in their usual namePumpkin grower
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 35 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 78 | #3,536 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 49 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 25 | #14,850 |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1998 | 4 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2014 | 1 | — |
Reference works 3
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Tella mean, and where does it come from?
- A traditional beer from Ethiopia and Eritrea, brewed from various grains. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Tella?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈtɛɫə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Tella have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 18 thousand people named Tella in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tella.
- Where is Tella most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Tella is densest in Finland — about 1 in 9.5 thousand people — even though Nigeria holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Tella?
- In India, the national register counted 1,399 people named Tella, about 1 in 948 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Tella?
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/tellaThe 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, “Tella”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.