Bell

surname · English · Latin script

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

Bell is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 59th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from Middle English/Old French bell ‘bell’; nickname or occupational name for a bell-ringer.

rarermore common
  • AUAustralia1 in 892◐
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 1.1K
  • NZNew Zealand1 in 1.1K

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

≈228K ●

across 12 countries

#404 ●

of 21M surnames

Sources
567 ●

3.0M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 1.5K ◐

United States

Meaning & origin●

from Middle English/Old French bell ‘bell’; nickname or occupational name for a bell-ringer

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Bell is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#59220,5992.5M rec.1 in 1.5K267KBell567
GB United Kingdom#53218,279194K rec.—listedBell293
AU Australia#5094,38892K rec.—1Bell272
CA Canada#5257,14957K rec.—1Bell231
DE Germany#54815,92216K rec.——Bell161
IT Italy#9512,45813K rec.—1Bell66
RU Russia—7,4087.8K rec.——Bell57
NZ New Zealand#496,9046K rec.——Bell125
IE Ireland#1366,1096.1K rec.——Bell96
SG Singapore#895,4155.9K rec.——Bell58
EG Egypt#6074,9645.1K rec.——Bell23
ES Spain—2,5405.2K rec.1 in 20K2.5KBell98

Roughly 221K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 1.5K). 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●

  • English3M83%
  • Spanish111K3%
  • 109K3%
  • Welsh83K2%
  • German33K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English2,983,21083%
Spanish111,4533%
109,1163%
Welsh83,1612%
German33,2641%

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◐

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

  • Spanish surname141K records spelled Bell4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico

    Also written Bëll

  • French surname32K records spelled Bell11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Bell', Bëll, Bėlĺ, Bèll, Bėll

  • Portuguese surname22K records spelled Bell4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, Portugal

    Also written Bëll, Bêll, Béll

  • Hindi surname14K records spelled Bell5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Bëll, Bèll

  • Arabic surname9.7K records spelled Bell64 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Algeria, Morocco, Poland

    Languages: Arabic, French, Polish

    Also written Bel, B'El, Bél, Bêl, Bèl

  • Chinese surname9.2K records spelled Bell2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand

    Also written Bells

79 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●

Bell 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 English, from a sign of a bell or bell sound; or a bell-maker; or from medieval names Bel/Isabel; or from Scottish Gaelic Mac Giolla Mhaoil

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

  • In English, Probably from Old French bel ‘handsome’; also a Scotticised Gaelic MacMillan byname (Clann na Belich) or a matronym from Bell/Isabel.

    as a nameScottish Surnames

  • In English, from OFr belle/bel ‘beautiful’; earliest attestation Ailuuardus filius Betti 1086 DB (Suffolk)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In German, Toponymic surname from a place name or dwelling/landscape feature; derived from Bell.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte

  • In English, A percussive instrument made of metal or other hard material, typically but not always in the shape of an inverted cup with a flared rim, which resonates when struck.

    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.

Over time●

02040608019001950200063 · 1900

Show as table
Bell in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
188031
188129
188238
188333
188450
188545
188646
188744
188845
188955
189061
189155
189259
189342
189443
189546
189651
189744
189858
189952
190063
190152
190243
190348
190434
190545
190640
190733
190831
190929
191050
191143
191258
191340
191435
191547
191647
191731
191850
191949
192042
192136
192228
192331
192433
192534
192628
192721
192820
192917
193022
193110
193212
19337
193415
19357
193616
19379
193815
193912
194013
194112
194214
19435
19445
19458
19466
19478
19485
19498
19516
19528
19545
19555
19568
19587
19597
19606
19617
19625
19675
19706
19735
19915
19935
20067
20085
20098
20108
20116
20125
20135
20149
20157
201710
201814
20207
20217
20228
20237
20246
20258

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 102 years between 1880–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

18001850190019502000Alexander G. Bell, b. 1847Gertrude Bell, b. 1868Vanessa Bell, b. 1879Virginia Bell, b. 1932Jocelyn Bell Burnell, b. 1943Catherine Bell, b. 1968Lake Bell, b. 1979Kristen Bell, b. 1980Jillian Bell, b. 1984Drake Bell, b. 1986
  • Alexander G. Bellb. 1847USCanadian-American scientist inventor of telephone (1847–1922)
  • Gertrude Bellb. 1868GBBritish traveller, writer, mountaineer, politician, archaeologist and spy (1868–1926)
  • Vanessa Bellb. 1879GBBritish painter and interior designer (1879–1961)
  • Virginia Bellb. 1932USAmerican actress and burlesque dancer (1932–2010)
  • Jocelyn Bell Burnellb. 1943GBBritish astrophysicist (born 1943)
  • Catherine Bellb. 1968GBBritish actress (born 1968)
  • Lake Bellb. 1979USAmerican actress, director and screenwriter (born 1979)
  • Kristen Bellb. 1980USAmerican actress
  • Jillian Bellb. 1984USAmerican actress and comedian
  • Drake Bellb. 1986USAmerican actor (born 1986)

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 68 sources across 36 countries.

Official registers attesting Bell
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020267K#76
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000265K#67
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010221K#106
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020836#11,725
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—777#5,533
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—777#5,531
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—763#11,706
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—618#2,085
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—573—
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—336#771
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2025309—
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)2024261#4,983

Reference works 6

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname 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 · 453 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Bell?
We estimate roughly 228 thousand people bear Bell (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
In which country does Bell have the most bearers?
We estimate about 221 thousand people bear Bell in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled bell.
How common is Bell compared with other names?
In the United States, Bell is the 59th most common surname of 7,257,200 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Bell mean?
Recorded meaning: from Middle English/Old French bell ‘bell’; nickname or occupational name for a bell-ringer
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bell

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, “Bell” — the 59th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Bell parses inside a full name →