Gagarin
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A transliteration of the Russian surname Гага́рин (Gagárin)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɡəɡɑːɹɪn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gagarin is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Russia than in any other country.
- RURussia≈1 in 23Kas Гагарин(inferred from the name graph)
- UAUkraine≈1 in 148Kas Гагарін
- KZKazakhstan1 in 239Kas Гагарин
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Gagarin itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Russia (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 144 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.3M (inferred from the name graph)
≈6,000 named Гагарин, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Гагарин in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan, KG Kyrgyzstan and 1 more and Гагарін in UA Ukraine.
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)
ing-bird’, presumably denoting a strong swimmer.
Sources 1
- A dictionary of surnames
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
How Gagarin is read(measured from records)
Gagarin 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.
- English56%
A transliteration of the Russian surname Гага́рин (Gagárin).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Yuri, cosmonaut, USSR
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Spanish19%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Gagarin in Spanish.
- Russian5.1%
ing-bird’, presumably denoting a strong swimmer.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Gagarin 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RU Russia | ≈6,000 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Гагарин | 144 |
| UA Ukraine | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 148K | — | Гагарін | 17 |
| US United States | 264 | 1 in 1.3M | 323 | Gagarin | 59 |
| KZ Kazakhstan | 80as Гагарин | 1 in 239K | 304 | Гагарин | 32 |
| BY Belarus | ≈27 est. | ≈1 in 355K | — | Гагарин | 10 |
| KG Kyrgyzstan | ≈12 est. | ≈1 in 484K | — | Гагарин | 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: 2021 National Population Census — popular surnames of Kazakhs, by region of residence; 2021 National Population Census — popular surnames of Russians, by region of residence; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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)
Gagarin 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 Croatian, ruski časnik, prvi čovjek koji je u svemirskom brodu obletio Zemlju (1961)
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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)
- Pavel Gagarinb. 1789RURussian politician
- Grigory Gagarinb. 1810RURussian artist (1810-1893)
- Ivan Gagarinb. 1814RURussian priest (1814–1882)
- Anna Gagarinab. 1903RUnot in their usual namemother of Yuri Gagarin
- Yuri Gagarinb. 1934RUSoviet pilot and cosmonaut, first human in space (1934–1968)
- Andrey Gagarinb. 1934RURussian prince of the Rurik dynasty and a professor of physics (1934-2011)
- Valentina Ivanovna Gagarinab. 1935RUnot in their usual namewife of Yuri Gagarin (1935-2020)
- Macha Mérilb. 1940FRnot in their usual nameFrench actress
- Yelena Gagarinab. 1959RUnot in their usual nameart historian and director of the Moscow Kremlin Museums
- Polina Gagarinab. 1987RUnot in their usual nameRussian singer-songwriter
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 24 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 323 | #66,171 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 264 | #73,464 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 261 | #70,052 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- Where does the name Gagarin come from?
- ing-bird’, presumably denoting a strong swimmer. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
- How do you pronounce Gagarin?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡəɡɑːɹɪn/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Gagarin mean?
- In English, A transliteration of the Russian surname Гага́рин (Gagárin).
- In which country does Gagarin have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 6.0 thousand people named Гагарин in Russia, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Gagarin most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Gagarin is densest in the United States — about 1 in 1.3 million people — even though Russia holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Gagarin?
- In the United States, the national register counted 264 people named Gagarin in 2010, about 1 in 1.3 million residents.
What do you want to know about Gagarin?
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/gagarinThe 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, “Gagarin”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.