Wal
loc · Latin script
Meaning, in Polish: whale (certain species)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Wal is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country.
- BEBelgium≈1 in 74K(inferred from the name graph)
- PLPoland1 in 24K
- PGPapua New Guinea≈1 in 97K
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.
- Poland (measured from records)
- Sources
- 127 (measured from records)
- 1 in 24K (inferred from the name graph)
1,609 people, 2026
Highest-authority source
Poland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
probably to Gothic waljan 'choose', walis 'chosen'; hard to separate from WALCH and WALT
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Wal is read(measured from records)
Wal 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.
- Polish17%
whale (certain species)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Dutch7.3%
coast, shore (side of land near to the water)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Wal 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | 1,609 | 1 in 24K | 812 | — | — |
| PK Pakistan | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 233K | listed | — | 1 |
| DE Germany | ≈510 est. | ≈1 in 158K | listed | — | 1 |
| US United States | 320 | 1 in 1M | 344 | — | 91 |
| FR France | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 310K | 4 | — | 1 |
| BE Belgium | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 74K | — | Wal | 33 |
| PG Papua New Guinea | ≈75 est. | ≈1 in 97K | 2 | — | — |
| NO Norway | 36 | 1 in 152K | 36 | — | 4 |
1,609 people counted by dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames), 2026. 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: dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); PNG Election Results Database — candidate names (1972–2022); the dfa-band-4 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Wal is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, probably to Gothic waljan 'choose', walis 'chosen'; hard to separate from WALCH and WALT
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In esy, eight
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
ISO 639-2 & ISO 639-3 language code for Wolaitta.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In frr, first/third-person singular present of wel
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)
- Johan de Walb. 1816NLDutch jurist and legal historian (1816–1892)
- Wal Campbellb. 1906AUAustralian journalist
- Simon Lambertus van der Walb. 1910NLDutch university teacher (1910-1978)
- Wim van der Walb. 1966NLDutch association football manager
- Tim ter Walb. 1984NLDutch drawer
- Wal Fallb. 1992DEGerman footballer
- Caspar H van der Walresearcher
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 32 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 812 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 812 | #3,826 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 797 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 797 | #3,991 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 344 | #62,792 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 320 | #62,531 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 216 | #81,414 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 36 | #31,372 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 11 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 10 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 8 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 6 | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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 Wal come from?
- probably to Gothic waljan 'choose', walis 'chosen'; hard to separate from WALCH and WALT Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- What does the name Wal mean?
- In Polish, whale (certain species)
- In which country does Wal have the most bearers?
- In Poland, the national register counted about 1.6 thousand people named Wal, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Wal most common?
- Wal is densest in Poland, where the national register counts about 1 in 24 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Wal?
- In Poland, the national register counted 1,609 people named Wal in 2026, about 1 in 24 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Wal?
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/walThe 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, “Wal”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.