Nella

given name · English · Latin script

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

Nella is a given name, with more bearers in Finland than in any other country. It appears chiefly in English and Czech, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Old German; light of the sun; form of Eleanor/Helen.

rarermore common
  • NLNetherlands1 in 41K◐
  • AUAustralia1 in 75K
  • USUnited States1 in 140K

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

≈13K ●

across 11 countries

Sources
217 ●

29K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 1.3K ◐

Finland

Meaning & origin●

Old German; light of the sun; form of Eleanor/Helen

Sources 1

  • Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Nella is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FI Finland4,394△79 rec.1 in 1.3K4.5KNella23
CZ Czechia4,258△1 rec.1 in 2.5K4.3K—3
NL Netherlands2,945418 rec.—280Nella24
US United States2,37621K rec.1 in 140K2.4KNella217
AU Australia1,5361.5K rec.—3Nella80
FR France1,025△1 rec.1 in 66K1K—2
GB United Kingdom992995 rec.—5Nella58
CA Canada940692 rec.—1Nella48
IT Italy929990 rec.—2Nella37
DE Germany709786 rec.——Nella61
PL Poland685△1 rec.1 in 56K685—2
ZA South Africa483506 rec.——Nella18

Roughly 4.4K people in Finland bear this name (about 1 in 1.3K). 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●

  • English25K25%
  • Czech19K18%
  • Finnish18K18%
  • French7.1K7%
  • Spanish7.1K7%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English25,40425%
Czech18,67118%
Finnish18,25918%
French7,1137%
Spanish7,0877%

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◐

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

  • Russian given name24K records spelled Nella20 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia, Russia, Ukraine, Poland

    Languages: Russian, Czech, Ukrainian

    Also written Нелла, Нэлла, Neļļa, Nélla, Nèlla

  • Finnish given name19K records spelled Nella3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, United States, Italy, Estonia

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Nellă

  • Spanish given name11K records spelled Nella3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, Peru, United States, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Nëllä

  • Italian given name5.0K records spelled Nella3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, United States, Canada, Philippines

    Also written Nellà, Ńêlla

  • a separate given name1.1K records spelled Nella2 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Nėlla

  • Czech given name1.1K records spelled Nella47 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia, Poland, Romania, Croatia

    Languages: Czech, Polish, Hungarian

    Also written Nela, Нела, Нэла, Нелла, Nelâ

50 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●

Nella 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 Swedish, Se Petronella.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In German, weibl. Vom., Kurzform von

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • In Italian, contraction of in la; in the

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

  • In Portuguese, obsolete spelling of nela

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

  • In Latvian, Sievietes vārds

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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●

025507510019001950200081 · 1927

Show as table
Nella in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
188010
188119
188211
18836
188419
188510
188611
188712
188817
188910
18909
189115
189218
189316
189419
189518
189614
189717
189811
189910
190014
190113
190215
190320
190414
190522
190612
190722
190826
190918
191034
191118
191244
191336
191444
191548
191657
191747
191874
191961
192057
192179
192274
192358
192470
192574
192658
192781
192857
192948
193068
193156
193266
193358
193481
193559
193665
193768
193852
193946
194061
194154
194238
194343
194438
194533
194638
194738
194828
194941
195031
195139
195237
195333
195432
195523
195625
195722
195824
195919
196025
196120
196225
196312
196425
196518
196614
196716
196811
196917
197011
197110
19725
19739
197412
197510
197615
197810
19797
19819
19825
19835
19865
19897
19926
19977
19995
20016
200212
200415
200512
200625
200722
200832
200948
201039
201139
201258
201351
201463
201560
201658
201775
201880
201974
202066
202172
202281
202361
202461
202560

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 131 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●

18501900195020002050Nelia Casella, b. 1859Nella Walker, b. 1886Nella Larsen, b. 1891Nella Maria Bonora, b. 1904Nella Bielski, b. 1937Nella Golanda, b. 1941Nella Martinetti, b. 1946Nella Cotrupi, b. 1953Nella Mlsová, b. 1963Nella Pelkonen, b. 2005

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 80 sources across 44 countries.

Official registers attesting Nella
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—4.5K#693
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—4.4K—
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—4.3K#281
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20202.4K#6,649
CZ Czechianaše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot—2.1K#312
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20241K#1,761
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—685#574
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)2026685#574
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—363#3,451
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—280#4,511
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—256#3,961
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020235—

Reference works 4

  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary

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

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 532 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Nella?
We estimate roughly 13 thousand people bear Nella (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Nella have the most bearers?
We estimate about 4.4 thousand people bear Nella in Finland, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled nella.
Where is Nella most common?
Nella is densest in Finland, where the national register counts about 1 in 1.3 thousand people carrying it.
Is Nella a male or female name?
Nella is a female 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 Nella mean?
Recorded meaning: Old German; light of the sun; form of Eleanor/Helen
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/nella

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, “Nella”. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Nella parses inside a full name →