Gilbert

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: from the Norman personal name Giselbert, literally 'pledge-bright, hostage-bright'; also an anglicization of Kilbride

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ɡɪlbɚt/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Gilbert is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • PHPhilippines≈1 in 840(inferred from the name graph)
  • BEBelgium≈1 in 2.3K
  • CACanada≈1 in 2.4K

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)

≈400,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
561 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 840 (inferred from the name graph)

Philippines, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

GilbertLatin(measured from records)
길버트Hangul(measured from records)

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)

from the Norman personal name Giselbert, literally 'pledge-bright, hostage-bright'; also an anglicization of Kilbride

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.

How Gilbert is read(measured from records)

Gilbert is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • English61%

    from the Norman personal name Giselbert, literally 'pledge-bright, hostage-bright'; also an anglicization of Kilbride

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

    from OG Gisilbert/Gislebert, OFr Gislebert, meaning ‘pledge- or hostage-bright’; first attested Gislebertus 1066 DB (W)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • French16%

    Germanic name from gisal ‘pledge’ + berht ‘bright, famous’; name-day not given.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

    Germanic gisil + beraht, 'pledge' + 'bright'; St Gilbert.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

  • Spanish8.7%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Gilbert in Spanish.

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Gilbert 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 Gilbert is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈400,000 est.≈1 in 3.5K—Gilbert31
PH Philippines#209≈130,000 est.≈1 in 840—Gilbert143
US United States#46268,8621 in 4.8K115KGilbert561
FR France—≈46,000 est.≈1 in 1.5K180K—13
NG Nigeria—≈23,000 est.≈1 in 9.4K—Gilbert70
CA Canada#415≈16,000 est.≈1 in 2.4K2Gilbert245
BE Belgium#916≈5,100 est.≈1 in 2.3K1.4KGilbert84
CR Costa Rica—2,9911 in 1.7K3K—2

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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

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

  • French given name11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Philippines, United States, Canada

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Gîlbèrt, Gilbèŕt, Gīlbert, Gilbért, Gil-Bert

  • Spanish given name14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, Peru, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Gílbert, Gilbërt, Gïlbërt, Gïlbëŕt, G̶i̶l̶b̶e̶r̶t̶

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Gilberṭ, Gilbért

  • Indonesian given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, United States

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written 'Gilbert

  • Russian given name24 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Russia, Poland, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Polish, Ukrainian

    Also written Гильберт, Гилберт, Жильбер, Гілберт, Гільберт

  • Hungarian given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Hungary, United States, Finland, Philippines

    Languages: Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Gìlbèrt

103 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Gilbert is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, from Germanic *gild-/*gil- + *berht 'bright'; also cf. bird-name usage

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • In Irish, Germanic ‘pledge bright’; introduced to Ireland by the Normans.

    as a nameIrish first names

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)

1700180019002000Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, b. 1757W. G. Grace, b. 1848Gilbert Keith Chesterton, b. 1874Gilbert Newton Lewis, b. 1875Gilbert Ryle, b. 1900Adrian, b. 1903Irwin Shaw, b. 1913Gilbert Bécaud, b. 1927Roger Bannister, b. 1929Gilbert Arenas, b. 1982

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 137 sources across 72 countries.

Official registers attesting Gilbert
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2004180K#1,988
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202069K#742
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—3K#261
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020155#742
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025145—
CA CanadaStatistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01)202412—
CA CanadaAlberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender20242#1,520

Reference works 9

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 Gilbert mean, and where does it come from?
from the Norman personal name Giselbert, literally 'pledge-bright, hostage-bright'; also an anglicization of Kilbride Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
Is Gilbert a male or female name?
Gilbert 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 Gilbert have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 399 thousand people named Gilbert in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gilbert.
What are other forms of the name Gilbert?
In the etymology graph, Gilberto, Giselle and GiB are forms of the same name in other languages.
How common is the name Gilbert?
In the United States, the national register counted 68,862 people named Gilbert in 2020, about 1 in 4.8 thousand residents.
How common is Gilbert compared with other names?
In the Philippines, Gilbert is the 209th most common given name of 486,299 given names recorded there.
How do you pronounce Gilbert?
A machine transcription gives /ɡɪlbɚt/ (IPA) for English.

What do you want to know about Gilbert?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/gilbert

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 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, “Gilbert” — the 209th most common given name in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Gilbert parses inside a full name →