Basil

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: from the male personal name Basil, ultimately from Greek Basileios, literally 'royal'

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/bæzəl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Basil is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Ukraine than in any other country, where it is the 22nd most common given name.

rarermore common
  • SYSyria≈1 in 3K(inferred from the name graph)
  • NGNigeria≈1 in 5.8K
  • USUnited States1 in 42K

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 Basil 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.

Ukraine (inferred from the name graph)

≈760,000 named Василь, est.

#89 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

5 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
385 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 3.0K (inferred from the name graph)

Syria, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

BasilLatin(measured from records)
ВасилийCyrillic(measured from records)
ՎասիլիArmenian(measured from records)
ვასილიGeorgian(measured from records)
ΒασιληGreek(measured from records)

6 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Василий in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan, Василь in UA Ukraine, Васил in BG Bulgaria and Vasili in MD Moldova.

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)

from the male personal name Basil, ultimately from Greek Basileios, literally 'royal'

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.

How Basil is read(measured from records)

Basil is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • English62%

    from the male personal name Basil, ultimately from Greek Basileios, literally 'royal'

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

    A plant (Ocimum basilicum).

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Arabic7.4%

    Just, (baasil) brave, bold, valiant. See Shuja ¢l.4, brave

    as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names

    brave, bold, valiant

    as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Often considered alongside

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Basil, 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)

Basil 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.

Where Basil is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
UA Ukraine#22≈760,000 est.≈1 in 58listedВасиль73
RU Russia#42≈590,000 est.≈1 in 240#13Василий202
BG Bulgaria#1247,441as Васил1 in 14747KВасил159
KZ Kazakhstan#36≈43,000 est.≈1 in 4414KВасилий57
NG Nigeria—≈37,000 est.≈1 in 5.8K—Basil73
MD Moldova#3214,252as Vasili1 in 23614KVasili27
US United States—7,8311 in 42K7.8KBasil385
SY Syria#861≈6,500 est.≈1 in 3K—Basil24

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: Bureau of National Statistics — birth registrations; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; NSI — most common given names (population); e-services.md — living population register. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Basil is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name21 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, Philippines, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Bas-Il, Bắsĩĺ, Básil, Bāsīl, Bāsil

  • Hindi given name13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, United Kingdom, South Africa

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Bangla

    Also written Basila, Bassil, Basilo, বাসিল, Baasil

  • a separate name7 spellings in the group

    Also written Bāṣīl, Bāsil, Băsil, Bāsīl, Baṣīl

  • Indonesian given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Indonesia, India, United States

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Bas-Il

59 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Basil 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.

  • From the Greek name Basileios ‘royal’ (a derivative of basileus ‘king’). This name was borne by St Basil the Great (c.330- 379), bishop of Caesarea, a theologian regarded as one of the Fathers of the Eastern Church. It was also the name of several early saints martyred in the East.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • Greek, ‘royal’. The name is used in Ireland to anglicise Brazil.

    as a nameIrish first names

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)

1400160018002000Basilios Bessarion, b. 1403Basil Fool for Christ, b. 1468Basil Rathbone, b. 1892Basil Sydney, b. 1894Basil Henry Liddell Hart, b. 1895Basil Radford, b. 1897Basil Hoffman, b. 1938Basil Poledouris, b. 1945Bassel al-Assad, b. 1962Bassel Khartabil, b. 1981
  • Basilios Bessarionb. 1403TRnot in their usual nameGreek theologian, cardinal bishop and Latin Patriarch of Constantinople (1403-1472)
  • Basil Fool for Christb. 1468RUEastern Orthodox Church Saint
  • Basil Rathboneb. 1892GBEnglish actor (1892–1967)
  • Basil Sydneyb. 1894GBEnglish actor (1894-1968)
  • Basil Henry Liddell Hartb. 1895GBBritish historian and theoretician of war (1895-1970)
  • Basil Radfordb. 1897GBBritish actor (1897-1952)
  • Basil Hoffmanb. 1938USAmerican actor (1938–2021)
  • Basil Poledourisb. 1945USGreek-American composer, conductor, and orchestrator of film and television scores (1945-2006)
  • Bassel al-Assadb. 1962SYnot in their usual nameSyrian engineer, soldier, politician, and eldest son of former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad
  • Bassel Khartabilb. 1981SYnot in their usual namefree culture and democracy activist, Syrian political prisoner

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)

InformalHi Basil,

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 89 sources across 48 countries.

Official registers attesting Basil
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.3K#13,088
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002K#13,717
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202K#14,592

Reference works 6

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

How do you pronounce Basil?
A machine transcription gives /bæzəl/ (IPA) for English.
What are other forms of the name Basil?
In the etymology graph, Vasyl, Basilio and Vasile are forms of the same name in other languages.
Is Basil a male or female name?
Basil 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.
What does the name Basil mean, and where does it come from?
from the male personal name Basil, ultimately from Greek Basileios, literally 'royal' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Basil have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 763 thousand people named Василь in Ukraine, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Basil?
In the United States, the national register counted 7,831 people named Basil in 2020, about 1 in 42 thousand residents.
How common is Basil compared with other names?
In Ukraine, Basil is the 22nd most common given name of 85,149 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Basil?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/basil

The 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, “Basil” — the 22nd most common given name in Ukraine. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Basil parses inside a full name →