Loading your next page…
Loading your next page…
A name. A world of connections.
A name with a story to discover
No sourced pronunciation yet
01 / Meaning & origin
Máel is recorded as a given name in Wiktionary.
Separate records with matching spellings: Mael (Breton, Danish), Maél (st-e71164baa0), Maêl (st-36a05d8c3d), Maël (Breton, Finnish)
No etymology is recorded in our sources for this spelling yet. The record exists because the name is documented in use; a meaning will be shown only once a cited source supports it.
02 / Across borders
Explore official naming statistics and documented language connections around the world.
The name atlas
0
countries in our sources
Select a country to follow Máel’s connections around the world.
0 countries with official statistics. Language records show cultural connections; they do not measure how common a name is.
Selected country
Our sources do not yet connect this name with a country. New records will appear here as coverage grows.
No country coverage is recorded yet.
03 / By the numbers
Follow the spelling through the years, one published dataset at a time.
No official statistics are imported for this spelling. No statistical dataset covering this spelling has been imported yet. See data coverage.
04 / Through time
Passages quoted verbatim from public-domain reference works. They reflect the scholarship of their time, not current consensus, and may use obsolete spellings.
MAEL— “disciple”
Maél-was, a servant boy, was translated into old Romance French as the former, by the word Ancel, or Ancelot, otherwise L'Ancelot; Villemarqué quotes a mention of the ‘_fable Ancelot et Tristan_,’ from the romance of Ogier, to show that in earlier days Mael, or Ancelot, was mentioned without the article, which has since become incorporated with it, so that Lancelot has grown to be the accepted name, and so universally supposed to mean a lance, that the Welsh themselves,…
Maél-was, a servant boy, was translated into old Romance French as the former, by the word Ancel, or Ancelot, otherwise L'Ancelot; Villemarqué quotes a mention of the ‘_fable Ancelot et Tristan_,’ from the romance of Ogier, to show that in earlier days Mael, or Ancelot, was mentioned without the article, which has since become incorporated with it, so that Lancelot has grown to be the accepted name, and so universally supposed to mean a lance, that the Welsh themselves, re-importing his history, called him Palladr, a shivered lance. Ancelot and Ancelin were certainly early chivalrous names, the latter perhaps confused with the Ansir or Æsir of the Teutons. Ancilée and Anselote are feminine names in the register of Cambrai, of the dates of 1169 and 1304; and as there most of the feminines are changed from those of men, it is evident that Ancil and Anselot must once have existed there, either named from the hero of romance, or translated from some Walloon Mael; and thence no doubt the Asselin, Ascelin of our old Norman barons, and the Atscelina Fossard, mentioned in a curious old tract on female names, as having lived in the North of England.…
Yonge, History of Christian Names (1884), Part V, Chapter III (Gaelic Names), Section XII (Devotional Names) · Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
A little story to keep
Take the story of Máel with you. Create a personal name passport with its meaning, roots and connections.
06 / Behind the facts
Review status: Source-reported — no editorial review recorded yet. Last data change 2026-10-15.
Wiktionary text: CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikidata: CC0. Commons recordings retain their individual file licences. Complete attribution is available in each group above and alongside each chart.
