Sello
given name · English · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Sello is a given name, most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is the 53rd most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Swahili, written in the Latin script.
- ZASouth Africa1 in 1.1K◐
- LSLesotho1 in 29K
- DEGermany1 in 1.9M
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- 34K ●
- Sources
- 60 ●
in 5 countries
39K records
Official registry-verified
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | #53 | 29,790 | 36K rec. | — | — | Sello | 60 |
| US United States | — | 129 | 519 rec. | — | listed | Sello | 56 |
| DE Germany | — | 65 | 201 rec. | — | — | Sello | 28 |
| IN India | — | 46 | 53 rec. | — | 3 | Sello | 7 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 39 | 54 rec. | — | — | Sello | 14 |
| LS Lesotho | #20 | 32 | 18 rec. | — | 11 | Sello | 7 |
| MX Mexico | — | 29 | 72 rec. | — | — | Sello | 16 |
| PH Philippines | — | 28 | 460 rec. | — | — | Sello | 13 |
| SY Syria | — | 14 | 104 rec. | — | — | Sello | 5 |
| PE Peru | — | 11 | 53 rec. | — | — | Sello | 12 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 10 | 7 rec. | — | — | Sello | 4 |
| AR Argentina | — | 8 | 479 rec. | — | 94 | Sello | 23 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English17K50%
- Swahili5.7K17%
- Southern Sotho2.5K7%
- English (South Africa)2K6%
- Spanish9923%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 17,113 | 50% |
| Swahili | 5,725 | 17% |
| Southern Sotho | 2,544 | 7% |
| English (South Africa) | 1,986 | 6% |
| Spanish | 992 | 3% |
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●
Sello 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 Italian, first-person singular present indicative of sellare
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Asturian, first-person singular present indicative of sellar
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Spanish, seal, sigil
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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.
Notable people with this name●
- Sello Rasethabab. 1958ZASouth African businessman
- Sello Chicco Twalab. 1963ZAmusician
- Sello Molotob. 1964ZASouth African politician
- Sello Mojelab. 1964LSLesotho boxer
- Sello Motloungb. 1970ZASouth African actor
- Sello MaecoSouth African politician
- Sello LehariSouth African politician
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 7 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 94 | — |
| LS Lesotho | Lesotho IEC 2022 National Assembly candidate lists | 2022 | 11 | #3 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 3 | #8,749 |
| LS Lesotho | Lesotho IEC 2022 National Assembly candidate lists | 2022 | 3 | #18 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 3 | #193,690 |
| IT Italy | 意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual) | — | — | — |
| BW Botswana | MasakhaNER 2.0 — Zimbabwe (sna) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames (Census 2010 + voter-file supplement) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- 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 · 8 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Sello?
- Our records include 33,857 bearers of Sello across 5 countries — a sample of the full distribution.
- In which country does Sello have the most bearers?
- Sello is most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is most often spelled sello.
- How common is Sello compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Sello is the 53rd most common given name of 215,346 given names recorded there.
- Is Sello a male or female name?
- Sello 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.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/selloThe 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
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, “Sello” — the 53rd most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.