Gadd
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: ‘Cattle-driver’, or a nickname for an incorrigibly troublesome person, from Middle English gad ‘goad, sting’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɡæd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gadd is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Lesotho it is the 17th most common surname.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 33K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 35K
- CACanada≈1 in 74K
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)
- Sources
- 286 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈24,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Lesotho, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘Cattle-driver’, or a nickname for an incorrigibly troublesome person, from Middle English gad ‘goad, sting’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
How Gadd is read(measured from records)
Gadd 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.
- English87%
‘Cattle-driver’, or a nickname for an incorrigibly troublesome person, from Middle English gad ‘goad, sting’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
ON gaddr ‘goad’; metonymic for GADDER; first attested Adam Gad 1188 P (He).
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
from northern Middle English gad ‘goad’, ‘spike’, ‘sting’ (Old Norse gaddr), hence a metonymic occupational name for a cattle driver or, more likely, a nickname for a persistent and irritating person. The Old Norse word is attested as a byname (see Gadsby).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
nickname for a persistent and irritating person, from ME gad goad, spike, sting (ON gaddr). In N England it may in part represent a survival into the ME period of the ON byname Gaddr; see Gadsby.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
- Welsh5.8%
soft mutation of cadd
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
Gadd 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 59K | — | Gadd | 4 |
| US United States | — | 2,793 | 1 in 119K | 2.8K | Gadd | 286 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 33K | 3.4K | Gadd | 158 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈730 est. | ≈1 in 35K | — | Gadd | 93 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈510 est. | ≈1 in 74K | — | Gadd | 86 |
| SE Sweden | — | 506 | 1 in 20K | 506 | Gadd | 42 |
| LS Lesotho | #17 | ≈470 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | — | Gadd | 1 |
| FI Finland | — | 156 | 1 in 36K | 156 | Gadd | 8 |
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); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Gadd 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.
In Swedish, a stinger, a sting (the spike of for example wasps, bees, and scorpions)
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)
- Pehr Adrian Gaddb. 1727FIFinnish chemist, ornithologist and biologist (1727-1797)
- Cyril John Gaddb. 1893GBBritish historian
- Renee Gaddb. 1908ARBritish film actress (1908-2003)
- Knut Gaddb. 1916SESwedish water polo player (1916–1995)
- Gary Glitterb. 1944GBnot in their usual nameEnglish convicted child sex offender and former glam rock singer-songwriter and musician
- Steve Gaddb. 1945USAmerican jazz drummer, percussionist and session musician (born 1945)
- Pia Gaddb. 1945SESwedish journalist
- Steve Gaddb. 1957AUAustralian musician
- Rochelle Gaddb. 1980GBBritish actress
- Richard Gaddb. 1989GBScottish writer, actor and comedian
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 26 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 3.4K | #2,296 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.8K | #11,308 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.8K | #10,657 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.6K | #11,523 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 506 | #1,864 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 156 | #9,041 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Sukunimitilasto (Finnish surnames register) | — | 61 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- 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
- 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
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 Gadd mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘Cattle-driver’, or a nickname for an incorrigibly troublesome person, from Middle English gad ‘goad, sting’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Gadd?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡæd/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Gadd have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 24 thousand people named Gadd in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gadd.
- How common is the name Gadd?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,793 people named Gadd in 2010, about 1 in 119 thousand residents.
- How common is Gadd compared with other names?
- In Lesotho, Gadd is the 17th most common surname of 5,753 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gadd?
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/gaddThe 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, “Gadd” — the 17th most common surname in Lesotho. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.