Nel
Nel was given to 6 girls in 2025, #14,431 among girls’ names; 133 Americans have been recorded with it since 1908 (Social Security Administration, published May 2026).
Girls and boys together; gaps are years SSA did not record (fewer than 5 births).
Births of Nel by year: SSA national baby-name file, 1880-2025, published May 8, 2026. SSA’s notes on the data.
What does Nel mean?
Wiktionary, English section
Nel is “a female given name, variant of Nell”
Also “a diminutive of the male given name Nelson”
Meaning: Wiktionary, English section, as of Sep 25, 2026 (CC BY‑SA 4.0).
How popular is Nel?
#14,431 among girls’ names, 2025
Nel fell from #10,660 in 2015 to #14,431 in 2025 among girls’ names; its share of girls born fell from 5.6 to 3.7 per million.
11 babies in 2013, the peak
Nel peaked in 2013, when 11 girls were given it, #10,058 among girls’ names. The 6 births of 2025 are 55% of that peak.
| Year | Births | Rank | Per million girls |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 6 | #14,431 | 3.7 |
| 2024 | 8 | #11,856 | 4.9 |
| 2023 | 8 | #11,895 | 5.0 |
| 2022 | 7 | #13,192 | 4.3 |
| 2021 | 5 | #16,981 | 3.0 |
| 2020 | 7 | #13,089 | 4.3 |
| 2019 | 8 | #12,113 | 4.8 |
| 2017 | 9 | #11,356 | 5.2 |
| 2016 | 6 | #15,687 | 3.4 |
| 2015 | 10 | #10,660 | 5.6 |
Every recorded year (19)
| Year | Births | Rank | Per million girls |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 11 | #10,058 | 6.3 |
| 2011 | 6 | #16,216 | 3.4 |
| 2009 | 7 | #14,784 | 3.8 |
| 2008 | 5 | #19,631 | 2.6 |
| 1951 | 5 | #5,986 | 2.8 |
| 1918 | 7 | #4,161 | 6.0 |
| 1916 | 7 | #3,814 | 6.7 |
| 1915 | 6 | #4,109 | 6.1 |
| 1908 | 5 | #2,343 | 15.0 |
Ranks and shares: girls’ names in each year’s SSA file; share of all girls SSA recorded that year.
Is Nel a boy’s or a girl’s name?
Nel has been recorded only for girls: SSA lists no boys with the name in 19 years of records (it lists a name only in years with 5 or more babies of a sex).
Girls and boys named Nel: the SSA national file counts each sex separately.
How many people are named Nel, and how old are they?
An estimated 106 Americans named Nel and born in the U.S. are alive in 2026 (80% of everyone recorded); the median is 9 years old and half are between 4 and 13. An estimate from SSA’s births and life tables, not a count.
The 2020 Census counted 521 people named Nel (367 women and girls, 154 men and boys). SSA’s births carried forward to Census day, April 1, 2020, predict 68 born in the U.S. The Census count is 7.7 times that prediction. Possible reasons: the Census records the name people give, which for many is the short form Nel rather than the name on their birth record, and it counts people born abroad, whom SSA’s files leave out.
Living estimate: SSA births carried forward with the survival rates in SSA’s cohort life tables (2024 Trustees Report) for each birth year and sex. How the estimate is made. Count: Census Bureau, first names in the 2020 Census (released April 14, 2026; names reported 100 or more times, with the Bureau’s disclosure-avoidance adjustment).
Names spelled alike
Of these 3 names spelled alike, given to 28,122 babies since 1880, Nel is the third most given (<1% of them). In 2025 it was given to 6 of their 139 babies (4.3%), the second most given that year.
Spelled alike: names in the SSA national file with the same pattern of letters and sounds and at most two letters apart, and Wiktionary’s listed forms; births since 1880 and in 2025, and each name’s peak year, from the SSA national file, published May 8, 2026. Some are separate names, not spellings of one.
More about Nel and names like it
- Compare Nel and NellBirths, ranks, peak and the living estimate side by side.
- The most given names of the 2010sNel peaked in 2013.
- The top names of 2013The year the most babies were named Nel.
- The names of Generation AlphaMost people named Nel alive today were born 2013-2025.
- Names starting with NMost given first.