Vella

surname · English · Latin script

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

Vella is a surname, most frequently recorded in Australia. In Malta it is the 3rd most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and French, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Italian and Maltese Vella.

rarermore common
  • MTMalta1 in 487◐
  • AUAustralia1 in 5K
  • BEBelgium1 in 37K

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

≈6.5K ●

across 14 countries

Sources
252 ●

59K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 37K ◐

Belgium

Meaning & origin●

Borrowed from Italian and Maltese Vella.

Sources 2

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Vella is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AU Australia#47516,81116K rec.—1Vella182
US United States—4,05134K rec.1 in 82K4.1KVella252
GB United Kingdom—3,2603.1K rec.——Vella108
CA Canada—1,2961.4K rec.—1Vella82
MT Malta#31,276636 rec.—47Vella87
DE Germany—1,009984 rec.——Vella69
AR Argentina—5460 rec.1 in 83K546—1
IT Italy—501459 rec.——Vella60
IN India—431△149 rec.1 in 3.1M431Vella24
BR Brazil—364△2 rec.1 in 582K364—1
FR France—351△6 rec.1 in 193K351—2
BE Belgium—314△49 rec.1 in 37K382Vella14

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

Languages●

  • English51K53%
  • French13K14%
  • Spanish7.8K8%
  • Maltese7.3K8%
  • Italian3.3K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English51,01853%
French13,20514%
Spanish7,8358%
Maltese7,3248%
Italian3,2603%

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◐

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

  • French surname14K records spelled Vella3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, United States, Spain

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Vélla

  • Spanish surname13K records spelled Vella4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Brazil, Spain

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Vellà, Vélla

  • Italian surname3.7K records spelled Vella3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, United States, Malta, Belgium

    Also written Veĺla, Vêllâ

  • a separate surname1.8K records spelled Vella3 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Veḷḷa, Vèlla

  • Finnish surname872 records spelled Vella3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, United States, Canada, Malta

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Věllå

56 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●

Vella is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In yol, alternative form of waal (“well”)

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

  • In bnt-phu, to go and check something, to take a look at, to keep an eyeon someone/something

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

  • In Norwegian Nynorsk, to well, gush, flow (issue forth, as water from the earth)

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

  • In Galician, feminine singular of vello

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

  • In Catalan, feminine singular of vell

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

  • In Portuguese, obsolete spelling of vela

    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.

Over time●

020406019001950200053 · 1915

Show as table
Vella in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1882–2025
Yearrecords
18826
188411
188515
188610
18879
18885
188910
18907
189112
189215
189311
18948
189514
189616
189713
189813
189915
190022
190113
190211
190319
190420
190518
190616
190720
190826
190920
191022
191123
191235
191330
191436
191553
191648
191745
191852
191949
192033
192152
192241
192331
192453
192535
192638
192739
192846
192942
193032
193138
193234
193331
193437
193528
193621
193730
193834
193919
194022
194122
194217
194317
194416
194523
194614
194726
194822
194919
195011
195119
195214
195315
195411
195511
195612
195717
195826
195918
196015
196112
19627
196310
19647
19656
19665
19676
19726
19735
19827
20055
20077
200811
200911
201014
201116
201219
201321
201416
201517
201620
201722
201819
201925
202028
202118
202223
202319
202425
202527

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 108 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●

1940196019802000George William Vella, b. 1942Vinny Vella, b. 1947Karmenu Vella, b. 1950John Vella, b. 1950Paolo Vella, b. 1950Mario Vella, b. 1953Daphne Caruana Galizia, b. 1964Cristian Vella, b. 1978Luciano Vella, b. 1981Glen Vella, b. 1983

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 45 sources across 25 countries.

Official registers attesting Vella
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020104.1K#8,189
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020203.8K#8,353
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020003.7K#8,210
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—999#3,865
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020829#14,188
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—546—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1961460—
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—431#10,277
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1971391—
BE BelgiumStatbel — Noms de famille (family names)—382#4,224
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1981378—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—364#22,502

Reference works 5

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 206 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Vella?
We estimate roughly 6.5 thousand people bear Vella (counting its spellings and scripts) across 14 countries in our records.
In which country does Vella have the most bearers?
Vella is most frequently recorded in Australia, where it is most often spelled vella.
How common is Vella compared with other names?
In Australia, Vella is the 475th most common surname of 520,735 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Vella mean?
Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Italian and Maltese Vella.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/vella

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, “Vella” — the 475th most common surname in Australia. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Vella parses inside a full name →