Melvyn
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Merciful; from title of the Virgin Mary; Old French
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mɛɫvɪn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Melvyn is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 131K(measured from records)
- GYGuyana1 in 75K
- NLNetherlands1 in 159K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 199 (measured from records)
- 1 in 75K (inferred from the name graph)
2,534 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Modern variant of Melvin, from an English surname of uncertain origin
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
How Melvyn is read(measured from records)
Melvyn 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.
- English66%
Merciful; from title of the Virgin Mary; Old French
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- French20%
Modern variant of Melvin, from an English surname of uncertain origin
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Origine celtique, signifie « prince ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Melvyn 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 | 2,534 | 1 in 131K | 2.5K | Melvyn | 83 |
| NL Netherlands | 109 | 1 in 159K | 109 | — | 3 |
| ES Spain | 31 | 1 in 1.6M | 39 | Melvyn | 16 |
| SE Sweden | 29 | 1 in 352K | 29 | — | 2 |
| BR Brazil | 20 | 1 in 11M | 20 | Melvyn | 16 |
| GY Guyana | 10 | 1 in 75K | 10 | — | — |
| CR Costa Rica | 6 | 1 in 850K | 6 | — | 5 |
2,534 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Melvyn Douglasb. 1901USAmerican actor (1901-1981)
- Melvyn Hayesb. 1935GBBritish actor
- Melvyn Braggb. 1939GBBritish broadcaster and author (born 1939)
- Leon Simonb. 1945AUnot in their usual nameAustralian mathematician
- Melvyn P. Lefflerb. 1945USAmerican historian
- Mel Collinsb. 1947GBnot in their usual nameBritish musician
- Mel Davisb. 1950USnot in their usual nameAmerican basketball player (born 1950)
- Paul Carrackb. 1951GBnot in their usual nameBritish musician
- Melvyn Galeb. 1952GBBritish musician
- Melvyn Richardsonb. 1997FRFrench handball 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)
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 43 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.5K | #6,363 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 109 | #4,186 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 85 | #8,792 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 63 | #6,363 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 39 | #15,750 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 31 | #41,183 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 29 | #19,634 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 20 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 13 | — |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 10 | #584 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 6 | #11,872 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2023 | 5 | — |
Reference works 3
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
- Where does the name Melvyn come from?
- Modern variant of Melvin, from an English surname of uncertain origin Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- What are other forms of the name Melvyn?
- In the etymology graph, Melvin and Melwin are forms of the same name in other languages; Mel is a recorded short or pet form.
- How do you pronounce Melvyn?
- A machine transcription gives /mɛɫvɪn/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Melvyn mean?
- In English, Merciful; from title of the Virgin Mary; Old French
- Is Melvyn a male or female name?
- Melvyn 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.
- In which country does Melvyn have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.5 thousand people named Melvyn, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled melvyn.
- Where is Melvyn most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Melvyn is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 75 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Melvyn?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,534 people named Melvyn in 2020, about 1 in 131 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Melvyn?
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/melvynThe 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, “Melvyn”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.