Scheel

surname · Latin script

Meaning: German surname from a personal characteristic: scheel = 'cross-eyed, squinting, one-eyed'

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

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

Scheel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • DKDenmark1 in 14K(measured from records)
  • NONorway1 in 39K
  • NLNetherlands1 in 66K

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)

3,504 people, 2010

Sources
22 (measured from records)

Reference-verified

1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)

Denmark

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

German surname from a personal characteristic: scheel = 'cross-eyed, squinting, one-eyed'.

Sources 1

  • Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Scheel 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 Scheel is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States3,5041 in 95K3.5KScheel22
DK Denmark4141 in 14K414——
BR Brazil2681 in 790K268——
NL Netherlands2631 in 66K263Scheel14
NO Norway1421 in 39K142—1
CH Switzerland661 in 127K66——

3,504 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; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)

Scheel is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, German surname from a personal characteristic: from scheel 'squinting, cross-eyed'.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen

  • In German, cross-eyed

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

  • In German, Familienname aus persönlichem Merkmal: zu mhd. schel/schiel 'schief, schielend, böse/unfriedlich'; teils auch als Beiname zu 'der Schillernde'.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen

  • In German, Übername zu mhd. schiel/schel/schelch 'schielend, scheel, schief, krumm'; körperliche Eigenschaft. Bearer count: 3823.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen

  • In German, Familienname aus einem persönlichen Merkmal: 'scheel' = schielend, schief, einäugig/krumm; Belegzahl 3823.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen

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)

18001850190019502000Heinrich Scheel, b. 1829Fritz Scheel, b. 1852Herman Carsten Johannes Scheel, b. 1859Signe Scheel, b. 1860Gustav Adolf Scheel, b. 1907Heinrich Scheel, b. 1915Walter Scheel, b. 1919Mildred Scheel, b. 1932Horst D. Scheel, b. 1950Sebastian Scheel, b. 1975

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)

FormalDear Scheel,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 31 sources across 21 countries.

Official registers attesting Scheel
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020103.5K#9,289
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020003.3K#9,017
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020203.2K#9,618
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—414#1,065
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—268#28,974
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)2007263#7,881
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—142#11,015
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202466#15,172
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

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 Scheel mean, and where does it come from?
German surname from a personal characteristic: scheel = 'cross-eyed, squinting, one-eyed'. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen.
How do you pronounce Scheel?
A machine transcription gives /ˈʃiɫ/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Scheel have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 3.5 thousand people named Scheel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled scheel.
Where is Scheel most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Scheel is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 14 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Scheel?
In the United States, the national register counted 3,504 people named Scheel in 2010, about 1 in 95 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Scheel?

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

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, “Scheel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Scheel parses inside a full name →