Nelu
given name · Latin script
Meaning: a diminutive of the male given name Ion, equivalent to English Johnny
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 18 countries
/nelu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nelu is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Romania than in any other country.
- RORomania1 in 1K(measured from records)
- MDMoldova1 in 22K
- ISIceland1 in 70K
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.
- Romania (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 28 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.0K (inferred from the name graph)
20,302 people, 2023
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Romania
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)a diminutive of the male given name Ion, equivalent to English Johnny
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Nelu 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.
20,302 people counted by DEPABD — name-day population snapshot, 2023. 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: DEPABD — name-day population snapshot; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); e-services.md — living population register; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)Nelu is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Javanese, to form a group of three; to hold a ceremonial feast for a woman in the third month of pregnancy
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)- Ion I. C. Brătianub. 1864ROnot in their usual nameRomanian politician (1864–1927)
- Ionel Teodoreanub. 1897ROnot in their usual nameRomanian writer (1897-1954)
- Ionel Perleab. 1900ROnot in their usual nameRomanian conductor (1900-1970)
- Ion Moţab. 1902HUnot in their usual nameRomanian politician (1902-1937)
- Ionel Petrovb. 1934ROnot in their usual nameRomanian rower
- Ionel Sinescub. 1951ROnot in their usual nameRomanian academic
- Ionel Augustinb. 1955ROnot in their usual nameRomanian footballer
- Nicolae Ciucăb. 1967ROnot in their usual name70th Prime Minister of Romania (2021-2023)
- Ionel Ganeab. 1973ROnot in their usual nameRomanian football coach and former player
- Ionel Dănciulescub. 1976ROnot in their usual nameRomanian footballer
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)29 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 1 | #85,963 |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Nelu mean, and where does it come from?
- a diminutive of the male given name Ion, equivalent to English Johnny Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Nelu?
- In the etymology graph, John, Juan and Ivan are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Ioan and Ion.
- How do you pronounce Nelu?
- A machine transcription gives /nelu/ (IPA) for Romanian.
- Is Nelu a male or female name?
- Nelu is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: Romania (DEPABD, 2023) and Spain (INE).
- In which country does Nelu have the most bearers?
- In Romania, the national register counted about 20 thousand people named Nelu, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nelu.
- Where is Nelu most common?
- Nelu is densest in Romania, where the national register counts about 1 in 1.0 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Nelu?
- In Romania, the national register counted 20,302 people named Nelu in 2023, about 1 in 1.0 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Nelu?
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/neluThe 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, “Nelu”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.