Armel

given name · French · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Armel is a given name, with more bearers in France than in any other country. In Benin it is the 44th most common given name. It appears chiefly in French and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Breton name, from arth 'bear' + mael 'prince, chief' or related Celtic elements.

rarermore common
  • CMCameroon1 in 1.5K◐
  • FRFrance1 in 10K
  • PHPhilippines1 in 145K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈7.4K ●

across 8 countries

Sources
244 ●

18K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 10K ◐

France

Meaning & origin●

Breton name, from arth 'bear' + mael 'prince, chief' or related Celtic elements.

Sources 1

  • Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Armel is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FR France—6,73512K rec.1 in 10K6.7KArmel244
CM Cameroon#641,2831.3K rec.——Armel36
PH Philippines—1,1541.1K rec.——Armel21
CI Côte d’Ivoire#681723763 rec.——Armel27
CD Congo - Kinshasa#144459456 rec.——Armel15
US United States—431810 rec.1 in 772K631Armel92
BE Belgium—293287 rec.—1Armel32
GP Guadeloupe#5372253 rec.—5Armel3
BJ Benin#44201126 rec.——Armel24
BF Burkina Faso#195155159 rec.——Armel12
AL Albania—142—1 in 22K142——
SE Sweden—35△6 rec.1 in 292K35—6

Roughly 6.7K people in France bear this name (about 1 in 10K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • French41K70%
  • English4.9K8%
  • Spanish3.9K7%
  • French (Côte d’Ivoire)3.9K7%
  • Albanian4821%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
French41,12270%
English4,8758%
Spanish3,9467%
French (Côte d’Ivoire)3,8757%
Albanian4821%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Armel is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name13K records spelled Armel12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, Germany, Cameroon

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Ärmel, Aermel, Ãrmēl, Ârměl, Armèl

  • Spanish given name5.5K records spelled Armel4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, United States, Colombia, Peru

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Aŕmel, Armêl

  • Indonesian given name603 records spelled Armel3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cameroon

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Ãrmel

  • a separate given name493 records spelled Armel3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India, Cameroon, Congo - Brazzaville

    Also written Armêl, Armël

  • Albanian given name487 records spelled Armel2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Albania

    Also written Ärmel

  • Finnish given name136 records spelled Armel3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, Philippines, Cameroon, United States

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Ärmel

47 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Armel 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 French, Celtic name meaning « prince » and « ours ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In French, Breton name, from saint Armel; celebrated on 16 August.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

  • In French, Prénom lié à un hommage à la noblesse familiale et au blé; évoque un enfant non désiré ou une difficulté d’accueil.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

  • In Maltese, widower

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

  • In Breton, armoire

    as a wordDeshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)

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.

Over time●

05101519201940196019802000202013 · 2023

Show as table
Armel in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1915–2025
Yearrecords
19155
19205
19215
19229
19265
19335
19529
19605
19685
19735
19775
19785
19859
19907
20008
20018
20036
200411
20067
200810
20096
20108
20129
20138
20149
201511
201611
20176
20187
20195
202012
20218
20227
202313
202413
202513

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 36 years between 1915–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1900195020002050Armel Guerne, b. 1911Armel Job, b. 1948Franck Haise, b. 1971Armel Hostiou, b. 1976Christian Bassila, b. 1977Armel Le Cléac'h, b. 1977Armel Tchakounte, b. 1978Wilfried Zaha, b. 1992Jean Armel Drolé, b. 1997Armel Bella-Kotchap, b. 2001

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●

Attested in 51 sources across 31 countries.

Official registers attesting Armel
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20246.7K#470
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000631#34,038
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010612#36,525
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020582#40,538
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020431#21,325
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2005220#2,200
AL AlbaniaINSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts)—142#2,234
XK KosovoASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search)—67#3,788
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202046#21,325
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—35#17,455
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—33#13,429
GA GabonMinistere de l'Interieur — 2025 candidate lists (local + legislative)202532#64

Reference works 3

  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 216 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Armel?
We estimate roughly 7.4 thousand people bear Armel (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
In which country does Armel have the most bearers?
We estimate about 6.7 thousand people bear Armel in France, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled armel.
How common is Armel compared with other names?
In Benin, Armel is the 44th most common given name of 1,808 given names recorded there.
Is Armel a male or female name?
Armel 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.
What does the name Armel mean?
Recorded meaning: Breton name, from arth 'bear' + mael 'prince, chief' or related Celtic elements.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/armel

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

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, “Armel” — the 44th most common given name in Benin. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Armel parses inside a full name →