Vale

loc · English · Latin script

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

Vale is a name, most frequently recorded in Portugal. It appears chiefly in English and Portuguese, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: dweller in the valley; from ME val(e), OFr val; first attested Wido de la Val 1190 P (Nth).

rarermore common
  • PTPortugal1 in 1.6K◐
  • BRBrazil1 in 1.4M
  • GWGuinea-Bissau1 in 11K

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

≈2.9K ●

across 10 countries

Sources
189 ●

95K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 17K ◐

Sweden

Spellings & scripts●

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Valle in LV Latvia and Valė in LT Lithuania.

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●

dweller in the valley; from ME val(e), OFr val; first attested Wido de la Val 1190 P (Nth).

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Vale is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
PT Portugal—7,4852K rec.——Vale112
ES Spain—1,498△360 rec.1 in 33K24K—52
SE Sweden—601△7 rec.1 in 17K601—9
US United States—4153K rec.1 in 802K32KVale189
FI Finland—197△7 rec.1 in 28K692—2
BR Brazil—15383K rec.1 in 1.4M28KVale167
LT Lithuania#96489105 rec.—listedValė17
AO Angola—3961 rec.——Vale18
IS Iceland—20—1 in 18K20——
LV Latvia—1637 rec.1 in 118K16Valle4
GB United Kingdom—12216 rec.——Vale66
AL Albania—10—1 in 307K10——

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

Languages●

  • English98K27%
  • Portuguese35K10%
  • Arabic6.2K2%
  • French1.7K1%
  • Malay1.3K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English98,11827%
Portuguese35,22710%
Arabic6,2042%
French1,6891%
Malay1,3181%

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◐

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

  • English surname60K records spelled Vale27 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Vaele, Val-E, Valè, Valé, Vāle

  • Spanish given name56K records spelled Vale41 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Spain

    Also written Välë, V'Ale, Vâlê, Valé, Valë

  • Thai surname3.8K records spelled Vale41 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, Nigeria, Laos, India

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written Walia, Wale, Valley, วาเลีย, Walley

  • a separate name3.6K records spelled Vale7 spellings in the group

    Also written Valè, Valë, Vāle, Våle, Valė

  • Russian given name2.4K records spelled Vale46 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, United States

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian

    Also written Вале, Valais, Валай, Валаи, Veil

65 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●

Vale 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.

  • In English, graphic name for someone who lived in a valley, ME vale (OF val, from L vallis). The surname is now also com¬ mon in Ireland, where it has been Gaelicized as de Bhal (see also Wall 3). The Fr. cogn. was originally fern., as in L, but later became masc., perhaps under the influence of Mont. Vars.: Valeri; Valleri (Tuscany); Val(i)er (Venetia). Dim.: It.: Valerini. Hung.: Valko.

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • In Portuguese, valley, receipt

    as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese

  • In English, A valley.

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

  • In Portuguese, valley

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

  • valley; Amsterdam, Surinam, Dutch Brazil, Chacim, Trancoso, Portugal, Babia, Ouro Preto, Cachoeira, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

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●

020406019201940196019802000202049 · 2016

Show as table
Vale in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1917–2025
Yearrecords
19175
19196
19237
19258
19506
19546
19555
19615
19625
19655
19695
19846
19985
20118
20125
201412
201544
201649
201733
201832
201933
202033
202119
202227
202312
202417
202516

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 27 years between 1917–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1900195020002050Frank Vale, b. 1908Eugene Vale, b. 1916José Vicente Rangel, b. 1929Ronald Vale, b. 1959Angélica Vale, b. 1969Leonardo García, b. 1972Eric Vale, b. 1974Bruno Miguel Esteves Vale, b. 1983Mason Vale Cotton, b. 2002Harvey Vale, b. 2003

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 53 sources across 30 countries.

Official registers attesting Vale
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020103.3K#9,728
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020203.3K#9,444
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020003.2K#9,462
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—1.4K—
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—505#7,924
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—505#7,916
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020415#17,250
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020228#17,250
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—184#26,546
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)2021178#4,681
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—170#9,305
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022153—

Reference works 5

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname 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 · 160 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Vale?
We estimate roughly 2.9 thousand people bear Vale (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
In which country does Vale have the most bearers?
Vale is most frequently recorded in Portugal, where it is most often spelled vale.
How common is Vale compared with other names?
In Lithuania, Vale is the 964th most common given name of 5,871 given names recorded there.
What does the name Vale mean?
Recorded meaning: dweller in the valley; from ME val(e), OFr val; first attested Wido de la Val 1190 P (Nth).
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/vale

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, “Vale” — the 964th most common given name in Lithuania. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Vale parses inside a full name →