Giselher
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from Germanic gisil 'hostage, noble youth' + heri 'army'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɡɪzɛlheːɐ̯/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Giselher is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 169K(inferred from the name graph)
- ATAustria≈1 in 377K
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 824K
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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 50 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 169K (inferred from the name graph)
≈480 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Germanic gisil 'hostage, noble youth' + heri 'army'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Giselher 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.
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: MVČR — living population register 2017. 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)
Giselher is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, alter deutscher männl. Vom. (ahd. gisal »Geisel; Bürge, Unterpfand« + ahd. heri »Kriegsschar, Heer«). Der Name ist bekannt durch den Giselher des Nibelungenliedes, den jüngsten Bruder König Günthers. 4· Be kannter Namensträger: Giselher Klebe, deut scher Komponist (20./21. Jh.).
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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)
- Gisilherb. 1000DEnot in their usual nameArchbishop of Magdeburg from 981 to 1004
- Giselher Wirsingb. 1907DEGerman journalist (1907–1975)
- Giselher Klebeb. 1925DEGerman composer (1925–2009)
- Giselher Guttmannb. 1934ATAustrian psychotherapist
- Giselher Gruberb. 1939DEGerman politician
- Giselher Schubertb. 1944DEGerman musicologist
- Giselher Suhrb. 1945DEGerman journalist (1945-2018)
- Günter Giselher Krennerb. 1946ATAustrian writer, actor and stage actor
- Giselher Spitzerb. 1952DEGerman sport historian
- Giselher W. Hoffmannb. 1958NANamibian writer (1958-2016)
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 3 sources across 1 country.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 2 | #44,525 |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia given-name 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Giselher mean, and where does it come from?
- from Germanic gisil 'hostage, noble youth' + heri 'army' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Giselher?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡɪzɛlheːɐ̯/ (IPA) for German.
- Is Giselher a male or female name?
- Giselher is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Giselher have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 476 people named Giselher in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled giselher.
- How common is the name Giselher?
- In Czechia, the national register counted 2 people named Giselher, about 1 in 5.4 million residents.
What do you want to know about Giselher?
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/giselherThe 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, “Giselher”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.