Tel

Spellings & scripts●

Locally spelled Toll in BR Brazil, US United States, GB United Kingdom.

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●

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

Languages●

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◐

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

• English name9.3K records spelled Tel8 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in Israel, United States, Switzerland, United Kingdom

  Languages: English, German

  Also written Tél, Tèl

• Turkish surname8.4K records spelled Tel5 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in Türkiye, United States

  Also written Toll, Tèl, Tél

• French surname3.0K records spelled Tel8 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in France, Spain, United States, Canada

  Languages: French, Catalan

  Also written Toll, Tél, Tèl, ́tel, Têl

• Hindi name2.3K records spelled Tel5 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in India, Pakistan

  Languages: Hindi, Urdu

  Also written Ṯḕḷ, Tèl, Tél

• a separate name477 records spelled Tel2 spellings in the group

  Also written Tél

• Japanese given name445 records spelled Tel5 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in Japan, United States, India, Canada

  Also written Teru, Terü, Tėru, Terû

• Indonesian surname207 records spelled Tel5 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in United States, Indonesia

  Also written Toll, Tél, Töll

44 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●

Tel 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.

• English: altered short form of TERRY or TERENCE , of recent origin. For the substitution of - l for - r , cf. HAL .

  as a word

• In trk-pro, decking, covering

  as a word·StarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)

• In non, first-person singular present indicative of telja

  as a word·kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

• ISO 639-2 & ISO 639-3 language code for Telugu.

  as a word·kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

• In Czech, second-person singular imperative of telit

  as a word·kaikki.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.

Over time●

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 27 years between 1985–2024. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

• Mathys Telb. 2005FRFrench association football player (born 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●

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 175 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Tel?

We estimate roughly 4.7 thousand people bear Tel (counting its spellings and scripts) across 14 countries in our records.

In which country does Tel have the most bearers?

We estimate about 2.3 thousand people bear Tel in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled toll.

Where is Tel most common?

Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Tel is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 17 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.

What does the name Tel mean?

Recorded meaning: Altered short form of Terry or bTerence, of recent origin.