Gäbel

Name: Gäbel: recorded bearers, distribution and rank
Creator: Mondonomo
Published: 2026-10-13
License: https://mondonomo.ai/tos#rights

surname · Latin script

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 2 countries

Pronunciation:

Gäbel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: metonymic occupational name for a maker and seller of forks, from Middle High German gabel(e), German Gabel ‘fork’.

DEGermany≈1 in 19K(inferred from the name graph)
SGSingapore≈1 in 34Kfew records
USUnited States1 in 46K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Gäbel itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

: United States (measured from records)
: 2 (measured from records)
Record sources: 338 (measured from records)
: ≈1 in 19K (inferred from the name graph)

measured from records inferred from the name graph

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Spellings & scripts

GäbelLatin

กาเบลThai

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Gabel in US United States, DE Germany, GB United Kingdom and 3 more and Gaebel in BS Bahamas.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin

metonymic occupational name for a maker and seller of forks, from Middle High German gabel(e), German Gabel ‘fork’. The reference is to any of the various pieces of agricultural equipment denoted by this word, for example hay forks, shearlegs, etc. Table forks were not used in Germany for eating before the 16th century.

Cited for this meaning 1

Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

Gäbel 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.

Where Gäbel is recorded, by country
Country					Most common spelling	Sources
US United States	—	7,177	1 in 46K	7.2K	Gabel	338
DE Germany	—	≈4,300 est.	≈1 in 19K	—	Gabel	114
CA Canada	—	≈820 est.	≈1 in 51K	—	Gabel	76
FR France	—	≈770 est.	≈1 in 89K	92	—	4
GB United Kingdom	—	≈750 est.	≈1 in 92K	66	Gabel	59
SG Singapore	—	≈180 est.	≈1 in 34K	—	Gabel	3
DK Denmark	—	116	1 in 51K	116	Gabel	43
BS Bahamas	#441	≈18 est.	≈1 in 23K	—	Gaebel	1

7,177 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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 names spelled this way

Gäbel is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

a separate name2 spellings in the group
Also written Gabel
Portuguese surname2 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Brazil, United States, Portugal, United Kingdom
Also written Gabel
Indonesian surname2 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, Malaysia, India
Also written Gabel
Croatian surname8 spellings in the group
Most recorded in United States, Serbia, Croatia, India
Languages: Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian
Also written Gabel, Gábel
Russian surname13 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, United States
Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian
Also written Габель, Габел, Gabel, Габёл, Gabel'
French surname4 spellings in the group
Most recorded in France, United States, Canada, Belgium
Also written Gabel, Gabël

2 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.

Notable people with this name

Otto Gäbelb. 1885DEGerman politician and bookbinder (1885-1953)
Tom Gaebelb. 1975DEnot in their usual nameGerman musician
Colin Gäbelb. 1976DEGerman television presenter
Denis Gäbelb. 1979DEGerman jazz saxophonist, composer and bandleader

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

FormalSehr geehrte Damen und Herren,Dear Gäbel, (English)

InformalSehr geehrte Damen und Herren,Hello, (English)

Evidence

6 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 2 countries.

Reference works 3

Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990

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

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Gäbel mean, and where does it come from?: metonymic occupational name for a maker and seller of forks, from Middle High German gabel(e), German Gabel ‘fork’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does Gäbel have the most bearers?: In the United States, the national register counted about 7.2 thousand people named Gäbel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gabel.
How common is the name Gäbel?: In the United States, the national register counted 7,177 people named Gäbel in 2010, about 1 in 46 thousand residents.
How common is Gäbel compared with other names?: In the Bahamas, Gäbel is the 441st most common surname of 3,175 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Gäbel?

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/g%C3%A4bel

The 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 2026-10-13 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, “Gäbel” — the 441st most common surname in Bahamas. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Gäbel parses inside a full name →