Guy

given name · Latin script

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

Guy is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Cameroon it is the 19th most common given name. In English, recorded as Either from the personal name Guy, from Germanic Wido of uncertain origin, or from Old French gui ‘guide’.

rarermore common
  • CMCameroon≈1 in 429(inferred from the name graph)
  • BEBelgium≈1 in 549
  • FRFrance≈1 in 835

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)

≈350,000 people, est.

Sources
419 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 429 (inferred from the name graph)

Cameroon, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Guy: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Guy
  1. Germanic Widoof(measured from records)
  2. Old Frenchgui(measured from records)

Either from the personal name Guy, from Germanic Wido of uncertain origin, or from Old French gui ‘guide’.

Sources 1

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

Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.

How Guy is read(measured from records)

Guy is one spelling over 2 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.

  • English56%

    Either from the personal name Guy, from Germanic Wido of uncertain origin, or from Old French gui ‘guide’.

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

    from OFr Guy, OG Wido, a common French name, usually latinized as Wido, sometimes Guido; first attested Willelmus filius Widonis, Guidonis 1086 DB

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • French32%

    French form of Gui, from Germanic Wido/Wido, of uncertain origin; often linked to “wood”.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

    From Germanic Wido, possibly related to 'wood' or 'wide'.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

    From Germanic Wido, possibly 'wood' or 'wide'; St Guy.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

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)

Guy 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 Guy is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈350,000 est.≈1 in 4K—Guy18
CD Congo - Kinshasa#29≈100,000 est.≈1 in 989—Guy36
FR France#126≈81,000 est.≈1 in 835266KGuy385
CM Cameroon#19≈65,000 est.≈1 in 429—Guy49
US United States—54,1431 in 6.1K54KGuy419
BE Belgium#65≈21,000 est.≈1 in 54928Guy153
IL Israel—≈9,000 est.≈1 in 968—Guy113

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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; 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)

Guy is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name34 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Guey, Güy, Gùy, Gūÿ, Guÿ

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Ģuy, Güy

  • Arabic given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates

    Languages: Arabic, Maltese

  • Hebrew given name10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Israel, United States, United Kingdom, France

    Also written גיא, גאי, גיי, Gai, Gay

  • Polish given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, United Kingdom, Canada

    Also written Ğüy

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)

Guy 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.

  • occupational name for a guide. Old French gui (a derivative of gui(d)er ‘to guide’, of Germanic origin).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family 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)

100012001400160018002000Callixtus II, b. 1065Clement IV, b. 1190Guy Fawkes, b. 1570Guy de Maupassant, b. 1850Guy Verhofstadt, b. 1953Christopher Lambert, b. 1957Guy Parmelin, b. 1959Bryan Adams, b. 1959Guy Pearce, b. 1967Adam Riess, b. 1969

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 101 sources across 59 countries.

Official registers attesting Guy
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2020266K#2,548
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202054K#849
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020140#849
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025103—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)195340#736

Reference works 8

  • 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
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • 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 Guy mean, and where does it come from?
Either from the personal name Guy, from Germanic Wido of uncertain origin, or from Old French gui ‘guide’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
What are other forms of the name Guy?
In the etymology graph, Guido, Wido and Gvidas are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Guy have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 348 thousand people named Guy in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled guy.
Is Guy a male or female name?
Guy 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.
How common is the name Guy?
In the United States, the national register counted 54,143 people named Guy in 2020, about 1 in 6.1 thousand residents.
How common is Guy compared with other names?
In Cameroon, Guy is the 19th most common given name of 9,064 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Guy?

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

The same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Guy” — the 19th most common given name in Cameroon. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Guy parses inside a full name →