Gibbs
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Patronymic from the medieval first name Gilbert, from Germanic gisel ‘pledge’ + beraht ‘bright’; frequent form from Gib
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɡɪbz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gibbs is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Jamaica it is the 97th most common surname.
- JMJamaica≈1 in 2.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 3.1K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 3.4K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 503 (measured from records)
- 1 in 531 (inferred from the name graph)
≈220,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Grenada
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Patronymic from the medieval first name Gilbert, from Germanic gisel ‘pledge’ + beraht ‘bright’; frequent form from Gib.
Sources 1
- Scottish Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gibbs counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈220,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.2K | — | Gibbs | 18 |
| US United States | #440 | 65,064 | 1 in 5.1K | 65K | Gibbs | 503 |
| GB United Kingdom | #283 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | — | Gibbs | 266 |
| AU Australia | #336 | ≈6,700 est. | ≈1 in 3.8K | — | Gibbs | 185 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈6,200 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Gibbs | 15 |
| NZ New Zealand | #227 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | — | Gibbs | 121 |
| JM Jamaica | #97 | ≈980 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | — | Gibbs | 18 |
| GD Grenada | — | 213 | 1 in 531 | 213 | — | 9 |
| IS Iceland | #457 | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Gibbs | 4 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Gibbs is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, An English patronymic surname from Gibb (Gilbert).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, son of Gibb
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In Croatian, američki fizičar, kemičar i matematičar; razvio statičku mehaniku, formulirao jedan od temeljnih zakona kemijske statike (pravilo faza) i primijenio u praksi termodinamičku teoriju na fizičke procese
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- James Gibbsb. 1682GBScottish architect (1683–1754)
- Josiah Willard Gibbsb. 1839USAmerican scientist (1839–1903)
- Antony Gibbsb. 1925GBBritish film and television editor (1925-2016)
- Marla Gibbsb. 1931USactress, entertainer, singer, writer, and producer (born 1931)
- Richard Gibbsb. 1955USAmerican film composer and music producer
- Timothy Gibbsb. 1967USAmerican actor
- Robert Gibbsb. 1971US28th White House Press Secretary
- Samantha Jadeb. 1987AUnot in their usual nameAustralian singer, actress and songwriter (born 1987)
- Kieran Gibbsb. 1989GBEnglish association football player (born 1989)
- Nicole Gibbsb. 1993USAmerican tennis player
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 48 sources across 29 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 65K | #515 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 63K | #523 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 63K | #478 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 213 | #68 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Gibbs mean, and where does it come from?
- Patronymic from the medieval first name Gilbert, from Germanic gisel ‘pledge’ + beraht ‘bright’; frequent form from Gib. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Gibbs?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡɪbz/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Gibbs have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 225 thousand people named Gibbs in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gibbs.
- Where is Gibbs most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Gibbs is densest in Grenada — about 1 in 531 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Gibbs?
- In the United States, the national register counted 65,064 people named Gibbs in 2010, about 1 in 5.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Gibbs compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Gibbs is the 97th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gibbs?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/gibbsThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
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, “Gibbs” — the 97th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.