Vilain
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Vilain is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- BEBelgium1 in 7.7K(measured from records)
- FRFrance≈1 in 18K
- USUnited States1 in 2.9M
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.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 233 (measured from records)
- 1 in 7.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,800 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Belgium
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Sources 1
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Vilain 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | — | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 18K | 543 | Vilain | 233 |
| BE Belgium | #617 | 1,531 | 1 in 7.7K | 1.5K | Vilain | 66 |
| BR Brazil | — | 246 | 1 in 861K | 246 | — | — |
| US United States | — | 113 | 1 in 2.9M | 152 | Vilain | 75 |
| DK Denmark | — | 70 | 1 in 84K | 70 | — | 1 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 30 | 1 in 576K | 30 | Vilain | 12 |
| JM Jamaica | — | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 415K | — | Vilain | 1 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Vilain 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 fro, peasant; commoner
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In nrm, ugly
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)
- Nicolas Victor Vilainb. 1818FRFrench sculptor (1818–1899)
- Paul Vilainb. 1860FRFrench architect
- Victor Vilainb. 1861BEBelgian politician and lawyer
- Raymond Vilainb. 1921FR1921-07-22--1989-02-18
- Éric Vilainb. 1958FRFrench politician
- Jean-Marie Vilainb. 1959FRFrench politician
- Eric Vilainb. 1966FRAmerican geneticist and sex development researcher
- Philippe Vilainb. 1969FRFrench writer
- Rob VilainNLDutch curler
- Anne VilainFRresearcher
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 19 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 1.5K | #740 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 1.3K | #864 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 737 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 671 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 655 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 644 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 606 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 543 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 543 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 529 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 467 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 431 | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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
- In which country does Vilain have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.8 thousand people named Vilain in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled vilain.
- Where is Vilain most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Vilain is densest in Belgium — about 1 in 7.7 thousand people — even though France holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Vilain?
- In Belgium, the national register counted 1,531 people named Vilain in 2008, about 1 in 7.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Vilain compared with other names?
- In Belgium, Vilain is the 617th most common surname of 246,397 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Vilain?
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/vilainThe 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, “Vilain” — the 617th most common surname in Belgium. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.