Galle
loc · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Galle is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country. Recorded meaning: 1. (Galle) nickname for a cheerful lively person, from a diminutive of Old French gail ‘pleasant’, ‘merry’. 2. Breton: variant of Gall 1. 3.
- BEBelgium1 in 6.5K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 25K
- FRFrance≈1 in 36K
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
- 246 (measured from records)
- 1 in 6.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,100 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Belgium
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Gallé in BE Belgium, FR France, NL Netherlands and 1 more.
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(measured from records)
- Middle High Germangalle(measured from records)
- Old Danishand(measured from records)
1. (Galle) nickname for a cheerful lively person, from a diminutive of Old French gail ‘pleasant’, ‘merry’. 2. Breton: variant of Gall 1. 3. German: variant of Gall, or nickname for an evil person, from Middle High German galle Gallego ‘bile’, ‘bitterness’, ‘falsehood’. 4. Danish and Swedish: perhaps from an old byname Galle, believed to derive from Old Danish and Old Swedish galle ‘fault’, ‘defect’. 5. Slovenian: Germanized spelling of Gale 5.
Sources 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
- Nordic Names
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Galle 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Gallé | 102 |
| US United States | 2,575 | 1 in 129K | 2.6K | Galle | 246 |
| FR France | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 36K | 272 | Gallé | 74 |
| BE Belgium | 1,801 | 1 in 6.5K | 1.8K | Gallé | 46 |
| BR Brazil | 1,253 | 1 in 169K | 1.3K | — | 2 |
| NL Netherlands | 240 | 1 in 72K | 240 | Gallé | 20 |
| EE Estonia | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 78K | listed | — | 1 |
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; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); the ee-siseministeerium-registry register. 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)
Galle is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Latin, vocative masculine singular of Gallus
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian Nynorsk, bile, gall (in the gall bladder)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In gmw-ecg, right?; is it?; is it not?
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In se, how many (interrogative)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Galician, inflection of gallar:
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, bile, gall
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Philip Galleb. 1537NLDutch engraver and publisher (1537–1612)
- Theodor Galleb. 1571BEFlemish Baroque engraver (1571–1633)
- Cornelis Galleb. 1576BEFlemish printmaker and publisher (1576-1650)
- Cornelis Galle the Youngerb. 1600BEFlemish printmaker (1615–1678)
- Johann Gottfried Galleb. 1812DEGerman astronomer (1812-1910)
- Carl Galleb. 1872DEGerman sportsman (1872–1963)
- Raymond Galleb. 1913FRFrench actor (1913-2003)
- Marc Galleb. 1930BEBelgian politician (1930-2007)
- VilleGalleb. 1987FInot in their usual nameFinnish rapper
- Clara Galleb. 2002ESSpanish actress and model
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 36 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.6K | #12,101 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.9K | #14,236 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.9K | #14,931 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 1.8K | #591 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 1.8K | #596 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.3K | #7,539 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 314 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 311 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 294 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 272 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 254 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 242 | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Galle mean, and where does it come from?
- 1. (Galle) nickname for a cheerful lively person, from a diminutive of Old French gail ‘pleasant’, ‘merry’. 2. Breton: variant of Gall 1. 3. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples) and 1 other source.
- In which country does Galle have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.1 thousand people named Galle in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gallé.
- Where is Galle most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Galle is densest in Belgium — about 1 in 6.5 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Galle?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,575 people named Galle in 2010, about 1 in 129 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Galle?
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/galleThe 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, “Galle”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.