Nelly

given name · Spanish · Latin script

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

Nelly is a given name, most frequently recorded in Argentina. In Uruguay it is the 60th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Spanish and French, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: A person's life.

rarermore common
  • ECEcuador1 in 449◐
  • UYUruguay1 in 570
  • PEPeru1 in 870

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

≈191K ●

across 15 countries

6 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
298 ●

829K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 449 ◐

Ecuador

Spellings & scripts●

NellyLatin · Spanish●1.2M records
נליHebrew · Hebrew●20K records
ᲜელლიGeorgian · Georgian●291 records
ՆելլիArmenian · Armenian●224 records
넬리Hangul · Korean●5 records
ΝέλλυGreek · Greek●1 records

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Nelli in SE Sweden, FI Finland, ES Spain and 2 more and נלי in FR France, IL Israel, RU Russia.

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●

A person's life.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Nelly is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AR Argentina#324335,548239K rec.—624Nelly71
PE Peru#111259,412206K rec.——Nelly72
VE Venezuela#148173,39771K rec.——Nelly54
MX Mexico#321122,13992K rec.—353Nelly168
CL Chile#20775,1964.4K rec.—7Nelly74
FR France—70,450△301 rec.1 in 96370Kנלי5
CO Colombia#15857,09329K rec.—21Nelly109
EC Ecuador#13337,686△1.1K rec.1 in 44938KNelly44
UY Uruguay#6033,03421K rec.—1Nelly42
BR Brazil—29,715△7K rec.1 in 7.1K38KNelly89
US United States—26,19154K rec.1 in 13K26KNelly298
PH Philippines#92822,08920K rec.——Nelly49

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

Languages●

  • Spanish1.2M55%
  • French405K19%
  • English231K11%
  • Portuguese54K3%
  • Swahili52K2%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Spanish1,173,20455%
French405,25519%
English231,39811%
Portuguese53,6873%
Swahili51,6762%

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◐

Nelly is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French given name425K records spelled Nelly11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Philippines, United States, Belgium

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Nélly, Nel-Ly, Ñelly, Nëlly, Nėlly

  • English given name304K records spelled Nelly39 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Venezuela, Ecuador, Netherlands

    Languages: English, Dutch, German

    Also written Nêlly, Nelly'S, Nęlly, Ñëlly, Nëlly

  • Indonesian given name21K records spelled Nelly6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Peru, Philippines, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written 'Nelly, Nëllÿ, Ñelly, Ñëlly

  • Russian given name21K records spelled Nelly101 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian

    Also written Нелли, Неллі, Нэлли, Nelli, Neli

  • a separate given name16K records spelled Nelly2 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Nélly

  • Finnish given name6.9K records spelled Nelly4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, Estonia, United States, Sweden

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Néllý, Ñelly

  • Lao given name3.0K records spelled Nelly13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, Chile, Thailand, United States

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written เนลล์, เนลลี่, เนลลี, แนลลี่, แนลลิ

69 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●

Nelly is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In French, Forme anglo-saxonne d’Hélène, du grec, « éclat du soleil ».

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

  • In Spanish, Hypocoristic of Elena, Eleonora or Cornelia.

    as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios

  • In French, Diminutive of names ending in -nel/-nella, especially Hélène or Cornelia.

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

  • In German, Nelly Sachs, deutsche Lyrikerin

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

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●

0100200300190019502000208 · 2007

Show as table
Nelly in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1882–2025
Yearrecords
188210
18838
18859
18865
18879
18889
18908
18925
18935
18956
18976
19019
19028
19038
19046
19055
19067
19077
19085
19097
19107
19127
191314
191413
191518
191610
191724
191820
191917
192021
192120
192218
192322
192419
192526
192628
192717
192824
192915
193026
193120
193213
193314
193417
193514
19369
193719
19389
193921
194022
19419
194220
194312
19449
194515
19467
194728
194817
194921
195021
195119
195228
195330
195435
195557
195655
195737
195846
195956
196062
196139
196245
196342
196444
196535
196638
196742
196844
196937
197048
197148
197247
197354
197477
197562
197678
197773
197885
197962
198070
198181
198285
198369
198469
198583
198669
198779
198892
198973
1990103
199191
1992126
199397
1994107
199597
1996104
199784
199879
199985
2000113
2001119
2002144
2003159
2004156
2005150
2006158
2007208
2008195
2009194
2010161
2011147
2012159
2013130
2014139
2015122
2016104
2017128
201899
2019146
202092
2021135
2022158
2023142
2024168
2025173

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 135 years between 1882–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1850190019502000Nelly Sachs, b. 1891Nelly van Doesburg, b. 1899Nelly Diener, b. 1912Nelly Sethna, b. 1932Christine Boisson, b. 1956Nelly Ciobanu, b. 1974Nelly Furtado, b. 1978Nelly Tagar, b. 1982Nelly Korda, b. 1998

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 100 sources across 56 countries.

Official registers attesting Nelly
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)202470K#756
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202438K#45
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202019K#1,630
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—5.1K#606
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—4.3K#807
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20203.3K—
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—3.2K#818
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—2.2K#5,562
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—2K#365
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)20222K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—2K#5,129
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—1.7K#398

Reference works 3

  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • 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 · 1,366 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Nelly?
We estimate roughly 191 thousand people bear Nelly (counting its spellings and scripts) across 15 countries in our records.
In which country does Nelly have the most bearers?
Nelly is most frequently recorded in Argentina, where it is most often spelled nelly.
Where is Nelly most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Nelly is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 449 people — even though Argentina holds more of our records for it.
How common is Nelly compared with other names?
In Argentina, Nelly is the 324th most common given name of 517,176 given names recorded there.
Is Nelly a male or female name?
Nelly 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 Nelly mean?
Recorded meaning: A person's life.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/nelly

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, “Nelly” — the 324th most common given name in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Nelly parses inside a full name →