Gaal
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Hungarian: habitational name from a place so named in the province of North Brabant
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈɡɑɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gaal is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 27K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 376K
- HUHungary≈1 in 14K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 215 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
884 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Hungary, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Ga'Al in NO Norway.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
habitational name from a place so named in the province of North Brabant.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Gaal is read(measured from records)
Gaal is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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%
Biblical name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Hungarian9.3%
habitational name from a place so named in the province of North Brabant.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
- Dutch7.2%
a hamlet in Maashorst, North Brabant, Netherlands
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German6.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Gaal in German.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Gaal 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 884 | 1 in 376K | 884 | Gaal | 215 |
| HU Hungary | — | ≈690 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Gaal | 4 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 644 | 1 in 27K | 644 | Gaal | 57 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈440 est. | ≈1 in 181K | — | Gaal | 70 |
| SO Somalia | #388 | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 39K | — | Gaal | 5 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈260 est. | ≈1 in 35K | — | Gaal | 48 |
| NO Norway | — | 88 | 1 in 62K | 88 | Ga'Al | 9 |
884 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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Gaal 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.
Loathing or abhorrence
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
In gmw-ecg, yellow
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)
- Thomas Gaalb. 1739NLFlemish painter (1739-1817)
- Pieter Gaalb. 1769NLDutch painter (1769-1819)
- György Gaalb. 1783HUHungarian writer, translator and librarian
- Jacobus Cornelis Gaalb. 1796NLDutch painter and etcher (1796–1866)
- József Gaalb. 1811HUHungarian poet, writer, playwrighter (1811–1866)
- Lisl Gaalb. 1924ATAustrian-born American mathematician
- Steven Gaalb. 1924USHungarian American mathematician (1924–2016)
- Hay Gaalb. 1947NLDutch association football player
- Gergely Gaalb. 1977HUHungarian educator and politician (1977)
- Robert Gaalb. 1981NLEntrepreneur from the Netherlands
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 31 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 884 | #27,331 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 882 | #28,704 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 832 | #27,313 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 644 | #2,884 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 88 | #17,029 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Gaal mean, and where does it come from?
- habitational name from a place so named in the province of North Brabant. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Gaal?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɡɑɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Gaal have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 884 people named Gaal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gaal.
- How common is the name Gaal?
- In the United States, the national register counted 884 people named Gaal in 2010, about 1 in 376 thousand residents.
- How common is Gaal compared with other names?
- In Somalia, Gaal is the 388th most common surname of 1,614 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gaal?
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/gaalThe 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, “Gaal” — the 388th most common surname in Somalia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.