Niall

given name · English · Latin script

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

Niall is a given name, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. In Ireland it is the 87th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: From néal, ‘cloud’; borne by Niall of the Nine Hostages and other Irish kings.

rarermore common
  • IEIreland1 in 620◐
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 8.6K
  • AUAustralia1 in 22K

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

≈2.7K ●

across 8 countries

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
261 ●

42K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 147K ◐

Spain

Spellings & scripts●

NiallLatin · English●57K records
나일Hangul · Korean●147 records

Locally spelled 나일 in KR South Korea.

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●

From néal, ‘cloud’; borne by Niall of the Nine Hostages and other Irish kings.

Sources 1

  • Irish first names

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Niall is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom#70224,04313K rec.—19Niall188
IE Ireland#8715,0336.4K rec.—46Niall156
AU Australia—5,3255.1K rec.—2Niall138
US United States—2,17413K rec.1 in 153K2.2KNiall261
CA Canada—1,321757 rec.—3Niall117
DE Germany—517461 rec.—1Niall63
JP Japan—423381 rec.——Niall23
ES Spain—341△170 rec.1 in 147K341Niall49
NZ New Zealand#887241177 rec.——Niall43
ZA South Africa—221197 rec.——Niall28
KR South Korea—164161 rec.——나일11
AE United Arab Emirates—8858 rec.——Niall34

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

Languages●

  • English57K81%
  • Spanish1.8K3%
  • French1.2K2%
  • German1.1K2%
  • Chinese1.1K2%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English56,72781%
Spanish1,8013%
French1,1792%
German1,0872%
Chinese1,0812%

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◐

Niall is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name4.7K records spelled Niall5 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Ñîall

  • Polish given name639 records spelled Niall5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United Kingdom, Ireland, Poland, United States

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Ниалл

  • a separate given name577 records spelled Niall2 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Níall

  • Indonesian given name271 records spelled Niall2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ireland, United Kingdom, United States, Indonesia

    Also written Níall

  • a separate given name169 records spelled Niall4 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Niāll, Ńĩâll, Niåll

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●

Niall 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.

  • ¢ Original Irish and Scottish Gaelic 182 : spelling of Neil. It has been strongly revived among non-Gaelic speakers in the 20th century.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In English, A male given name from Irish or Scottish Gaelic used in Ireland and Scotland since the Middle Ages.

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

  • In English, shortened form of McNeil and O’Neil.

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

  • In English, king of Ireland; pers. name. Irish

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, name of a 5th-century Irish king

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

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●

0501001501960198020002020110 · 2024

Show as table
Niall in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1955–2025
Yearrecords
19555
19566
19586
19597
19606
19618
19627
19637
196414
19675
196810
196911
197014
197116
19728
19737
19747
197512
197611
19777
19788
197911
198011
19818
198214
19837
198410
19858
198621
198715
198818
198928
199026
199145
199230
199335
199437
199531
199634
199735
199829
199933
200037
200134
200232
200339
200434
200528
200635
200733
200833
200922
201018
201134
201243
201369
201464
201555
201653
201776
201896
201968
202066
202184
202277
202390
2024110
202596

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 68 years between 1955–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

0500100015002000Niall Noígíallach, b. 301Niall MacGinnis, b. 1913Niall O'Brien, b. 1946Niall Buggy, b. 1948Niall Ferguson, b. 1964Niall Quinn, b. 1966Niall Matter, b. 1980Niall McGinn, b. 1987Niall Killoran, b. 1992Niall Horan, b. 1993

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 51 sources across 30 countries.

Official registers attesting Niall
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20202K#7,444
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—140#2,310
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)202596—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—75#6,123
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—59#6,058
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—58#12,299
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—55#25,688
IE IrelandCSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present)201746#134
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—45#12,589
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—40#15,438
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)202036—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—35#13,772

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 · 322 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Niall?
We estimate roughly 2.7 thousand people bear Niall (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
In which country does Niall have the most bearers?
Niall is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled niall.
How common is Niall compared with other names?
In the United Kingdom, Niall is the 702nd most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.
Is Niall a male or female name?
Niall 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 Niall mean?
Recorded meaning: From néal, ‘cloud’; borne by Niall of the Nine Hostages and other Irish kings.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/niall

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, “Niall” — the 702nd most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Niall parses inside a full name →