Nellie

given name · English · Latin script

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

Nellie is a given name, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Pet form of Helen; occasionally used independently in Ireland.

rarermore common
  • SESweden1 in 1.1K◐
  • DKDenmark1 in 4.7K
  • SGSingapore1 in 7.4K

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

≈40K ●

across 8 countries

Sources
368 ●

535K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 1.1K ◐

Sweden

Meaning & origin●

Pet form of Helen; occasionally used independently in Ireland.

Sources 1

  • Irish first names

Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Nellie is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#70926,191450K rec.1 in 13K26KNellie368
GB United Kingdom#73522,27721K rec.—500Nellie98
CA Canada#8189,7718.6K rec.—5Nellie87
PH Philippines—9,3829K rec.——Nellie55
SE Sweden#5449,158△2.1K rec.1 in 1.1K9.2KNellie59
AU Australia—7,9827.5K rec.—3Nellie101
IT Italy—2,9983K rec.——Nellie12
ZA South Africa—2,9052.9K rec.——Nellie47
NL Netherlands—2,3092.7K rec.1 in 7.5K2.3KNellie49
DE Germany—1,8641.8K rec.—1Nellie47
SG Singapore#3881,4631.4K rec.——Nellie40
DK Denmark#7101,247△140 rec.1 in 4.7K1.2KNellie44

Roughly 26K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 13K). 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●

  • English515K81%
  • Spanish22K3%
  • 13K2%
  • French10K2%
  • German8.7K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English514,82681%
Spanish21,8013%
12,5402%
French10,0252%
German8,6691%

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◐

Nellie is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name29K records spelled Nellie6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, Philippines, Mexico

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian

    Also written Nëllië, Nellìe

  • French given name11K records spelled Nellie3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Philippines, Canada

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Néllie

  • Russian given name3.6K records spelled Nellie101 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian

    Also written Нелли, Неллі, Нэлли, Nelli, Neli

  • Hindi given name2.1K records spelled Nellie18 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Hindi, Bangla, Sinhala

    Also written Neli, Nelly, Nelu, Nelie, ନିେଲି

48 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●

Nellie 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 English, A diminutive of the female given names Eleanor, Ellen, Helen, or Chanel; popular as a formal given name at the turn of the 20th century.

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

  • In Swedish, Nellie (m.fl former) är ursprungligen en engelsk smekform till → Eleonora, → Ellen, → Helena, → Petronella m.fl. namn. Namnet har varit mycket populärt de senaste årtiondena men är nu på nedgång. I den finlandssvenska almanackan 11 juli.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In English, Kate, Canadian actress

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

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●

02K4K6K1900195020004K · 1918

Show as table
Nellie in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
1880995
18811,096
18821,138
18831,246
18841,417
18851,432
18861,492
18871,457
18881,736
18891,752
18901,821
18911,647
18921,738
18931,770
18941,767
18951,833
18961,696
18971,693
18981,810
18991,510
19001,850
19011,454
19021,566
19031,491
19041,560
19051,626
19061,596
19071,671
19081,757
19091,768
19101,928
19111,866
19122,365
19132,645
19142,952
19153,679
19163,862
19173,808
19184,048
19193,726
19203,762
19213,513
19223,274
19233,184
19243,075
19252,937
19262,722
19272,678
19282,346
19292,198
19302,213
19311,987
19321,979
19331,867
19341,837
19351,738
19361,665
19371,590
19381,454
19391,373
19401,300
19411,284
19421,207
19431,077
19441,011
1945933
1946885
1947876
1948891
1949743
1950757
1951604
1952637
1953606
1954550
1955521
1956487
1957432
1958382
1959384
1960363
1961335
1962266
1963259
1964262
1965202
1966213
1967197
1968165
1969147
1970159
1971164
1972151
1973136
1974156
1975151
1976131
1977134
1978143
1979154
1980138
1981135
1982127
1983129
1984114
1985106
198696
198772
198897
198998
1990118
199181
199282
199371
199476
199587
199676
199776
199886
199985
200068
200185
200293
200388
200497
200584
200699
2007119
2008113
2009125
2010118
2011116
2012139
2013158
2014183
2015197
2016202
2017196
2018239
2019311
2020325
2021384
2022446
2023486
2024592
2025567

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 146 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●

1850190019502000Nellie Melba, b. 1861Helen Taft, b. 1861Nellie Bly, b. 1864Madame Sul-Te-Wan, b. 1873Nellie Tayloe Ross, b. 1876Nellie Connally, b. 1919Nellie Fox, b. 1927Polly Bergen, b. 1930Nellie Bellflower, b. 1946Nellie McKay, b. 1982

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 62 sources across 38 countries.

Official registers attesting Nellie
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202026K#1,355
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—9.2K#423
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20207.3K—
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—2.3K#739
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—1.4K#1,686
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—1.2K#347
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—1.1K#1,550
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025567—
GB United KingdomONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024)2024500#93
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2020500#3,270
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2025327—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—255#3,029

Reference works 2

  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

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

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 666 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Nellie?
We estimate roughly 40 thousand people bear Nellie (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
In which country does Nellie have the most bearers?
We estimate about 26 thousand people bear Nellie in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled nellie.
Where is Nellie most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Nellie is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 1.1 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is Nellie compared with other names?
In the United States, Nellie is the 709th most common given name of 3,122,706 given names recorded there.
Is Nellie a male or female name?
Nellie 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 Nellie mean?
Recorded meaning: Pet form of Helen; occasionally used independently in Ireland.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/nellie

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, “Nellie” — the 709th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Nellie parses inside a full name →