Waddell
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Either from Wedale (Stow) near Edinburgh, or from a place-name meaning 'hill where woad grows' / 'Woodhill' (Old English wad 'woad' + hyll 'hill')
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/wɑdɛɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Waddell is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 11K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 14K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 14K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 425 (measured from records)
- 1 in 9.7K (inferred from the name graph)
21,301 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Either from Wedale (Stow) near Edinburgh, or from a place-name meaning 'hill where woad grows' / 'Woodhill' (Old English wad 'woad' + hyll 'hill').
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Waddell 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 | 21,301 | 1 in 16K | 21K | Waddell | 425 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 2.1K | Waddell | 179 |
| CA Canada | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Waddell | 159 |
| AU Australia | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Waddell | 157 |
| IT Italy | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 28K | — | Waddell | 6 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈420 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Waddell | 53 |
| GY Guyana | 77 | 1 in 9.7K | 77 | — | 3 |
21,301 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); 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)
Waddell 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, From Wedale (now Stow), Midlothian, likely meaning ‘wooded valley’; Adam de Wedale is recorded in 1204. Later forms include Vedell (1557) and Vodel (1610).
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, from OE Wadel; first attested Ralph Wadel’ 1249 AssW. Also from Wadden Hall in Waltham, Kent; first attested Maurice de Wadehala 1181 P (K).
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A surname from Old English.
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)
- Alfred Moore Waddellb. 1834USlawyer and American military officer (1834–1912)
- Laurence Waddellb. 1854GBBritish explorer (1854-1938)
- Rube Waddellb. 1876USAmerican baseball player (1876-1914)
- William Waddellb. 1921GBScottish footballer (1921-1992)
- Martin Waddellb. 1941IEchildren's writer (born 1941)
- Rankinb. 1966GBnot in their usual nameBritish portrait and fashion photographer and director (1966- )
- Rob Waddellb. 1975NZNew Zealand rower
- Justine Waddellb. 1976GBBritish actress
- Kyle Waddellb. 1993GBScottish and British curler
- Brandon Waddellb. 1994USAmerican baseball player (born 1994)
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 26 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 21K | #1,691 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 21K | #1,576 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 20K | #1,750 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 2.1K | #3,554 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 77 | #548 |
| GB United Kingdom | Scottish Surnames (Ross, 1994) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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)
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 Waddell mean, and where does it come from?
- Either from Wedale (Stow) near Edinburgh, or from a place-name meaning 'hill where woad grows' / 'Woodhill' (Old English wad 'woad' + hyll 'hill'). Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Waddell?
- A machine transcription gives /wɑdɛɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Waddell have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 21 thousand people named Waddell, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled waddell.
- Where is Waddell most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Waddell is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 9.7 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Waddell?
- In the United States, the national register counted 21,301 people named Waddell in 2010, about 1 in 16 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Waddell?
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/waddellThe 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, “Waddell”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.