Harmel
surname · Latin script
Meaning: variant of the personal name Armel, derived from an Old Breton compound personal name, Arthmael, comprised of arth, arzh ‘bear’, ‘warrior’ + mael
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈhɑɹməɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Harmel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 659K(measured from records)
- DZAlgeria≈1 in 107K
- DEGermany≈1 in 122K
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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 173 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 107K (inferred from the name graph)
≈660 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Algeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
variant of the personal name Armel, derived from an Old Breton compound personal name, Arthmael, comprised of arth, arzh ‘bear’, ‘warrior’ + mael.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Harmel 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | ≈660 est. | ≈1 in 122K | — | Harmel | 57 |
| US United States | 505 | 1 in 659K | 543 | Harmel | 173 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈400 est. | ≈1 in 107K | — | Harmel | 9 |
| FR France | ≈320 est. | ≈1 in 213K | 47 | — | 1 |
| BR Brazil | 180 | 1 in 1.2M | 180 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 94 | 1 in 125K | 94 | Harmel | 6 |
| QA Qatar | ≈17 est. | ≈1 in 141K | — | Harmel | 2 |
| SI Slovenia | 11 | 1 in 191K | 11 | — | 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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)
Harmel 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.
ornamental name from Yiddish harml ‘ermine’ (see Harmeling).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Dated form of harmal.
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)
- Heinz Harmelb. 1906DEGerman general (1906-2000)
- Pierre Harmelb. 1911BEBelgian politician (1911-2009)
- A. Lerumob. 1915ZAnot in their usual nameSouth African communist journalist (1915-1974)
- Mohamed Harmelb. 1929TNTunisian politician (1929–2011)
- Carole Harmelb. 1945USAmerican artist and photographer
- Dominique Harmelb. 1955BEBelgian politician and lawyer
- Kristin Harmelb. 1979USAmerican journalist
- Tristan Harmelb. 1981researcher
- Adina Harmelb. 1997DEGerman association football player
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 21 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 543 | #38,320 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 505 | #42,858 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 502 | #45,838 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 180 | #40,060 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 94 | #16,364 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 53 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 47 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 40 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 39 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 35 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 29 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 24 | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname 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 Harmel mean, and where does it come from?
- variant of the personal name Armel, derived from an Old Breton compound personal name, Arthmael, comprised of arth, arzh ‘bear’, ‘warrior’ + mael. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Harmel?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈhɑɹməɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Harmel have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 657 people named Harmel in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled harmel.
- How common is the name Harmel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 505 people named Harmel in 2010, about 1 in 659 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Harmel?
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/harmelThe 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, “Harmel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.