Kjell

Spellings & scripts●

Locally spelled Челль in RU Russia, UA Ukraine.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.

Languages●

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

Other recorded senses●

Kjell is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

• In Swedish, Kjell är ett nordiskt namn, dels en sammandragen form av → Kettil, dels ursprungligen en smekform till namn på -kel, -kil, t.ex. → Eskil, → Torkel. Under 1940-talet var det ett av de vanligaste pojknamnen. En känd nutida namnbärare är skådespelaren Kjell Bergqvist (f. 1953). I den rikssvenska almanackan 8 juli och i den finlandssvenska 8 juni.

  as a name·Förnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

• In German, männl. Vom., schwedische und norwe­

  as a name·DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

• Swedish: contracted form of KETTIL . Cognates: Norwegian: Kjetil. Danish: Kjeld, Keld .

  as a word

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●

NO SSB — Navn (1880–present) — 81 years between 1945–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

• Kjell Aukrustb. 1920NONorwegian writer and illustrator (1920-2002)
• Kjell Askildsenb. 1929NONorwegian writer (1929–2021)
• Kjell Espmarkb. 1930SESwedish writer, literary historian, Member of the Swedish Academy (1930–2022)
• Kjell-Olof Feldtb. 1931SESwedish politician (1931–2025)
• Kjell Johanssonb. 1946SESwedish table tennis player (1946–2011)
• Kjell Magne Bondevikb. 1947NO33rd Prime Minister of Norway
• Kjell-Åke Anderssonb. 1949SESwedish film director and screenwriter
• Kjell Bergqvistb. 1953SESwedish actor
• Stefan Löfvenb. 1957SEnot in their usual nameSwedish politician, Prime Minister of Sweden between 2014–2021
• Kjell Westöb. 1961FISwedish-speaking writer and journalist from Finland

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●

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 290 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Kjell?

We estimate roughly 73 thousand people bear Kjell (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.

In which country does Kjell have the most bearers?

We estimate about 48 thousand people bear Kjell in Sweden, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled kjell.

Where is Kjell most common?

Kjell is densest in Sweden, where the national register counts about 1 in 214 people carrying it.

How common is Kjell compared with other names?

In Sweden, Kjell is the 99th most common given name of 36,824 given names recorded there.

Is Kjell a male or female name?

Kjell 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 Kjell mean?

Recorded meaning: a male given name popular in the mid-twentieth century