Gambier
loc · Latin script
Meaning: a Huguenot name from a French refugee family at Canterbury; first attested James Gambier b
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Gambier is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in France.
- FRFrance
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 222 (measured from records)
no count published
Highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
a Huguenot name from a French refugee family at Canterbury; first attested James Gambier b. 1692
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gambier counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | — | 469 | Gambier | 222 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 205 | — | 7 |
| AR Argentina | — | 104 | — | — |
| BR Brazil | — | 53 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | — | 26 | — | 13 |
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 noms de famille (1891–2000); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Gambier is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A flowering plant, Uncaria gambir, family Rubiaceae, native to Southeast Asia.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, village, OH; island group. S Pacific
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Ocean
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Norwegian Bokmål, Gambian (person from Gambia)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Danish, Gambian
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)
- James Gambierb. 1723GBRoyal Navy admiral
- James Gambier, 1st Baron Gambierb. 1756BSAdmiral of the Royal Navy and Governor of Newfoundland (1756–1833)
- James William Gambierb. 1841British novelist and Royal Navy captain
- Bertrand Olivier Gambierb. 1879FRFrench mathematician (1879-1954)
- Léon Gambierb. 1917FRFrench painter (1917-2007)
- Mariano Gambierb. 1931ARArgentinian archaeologist (1931-2006)
- Dominique Gambierb. 1947FRFrench politician
- Yves Gambierb. 1949FRFrench linguist
- Karine Gambierb. 1956FRFrench pornographic actress
- GambierFrench bronze caster, active late 1700s
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 13 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 574 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 476 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 469 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 462 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 458 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 437 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 366 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 327 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 309 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 259 | — |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 205 | #10,147 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1891 | 199 | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- Where does the name Gambier come from?
- a Huguenot name from a French refugee family at Canterbury; first attested James Gambier b. 1692 Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- What does the name Gambier mean?
- Recorded meaning: a Huguenot name from a French refugee family at Canterbury; first attested James Gambier b.
- In which country does Gambier have the most bearers?
- Gambier is most frequently recorded in France, where it is most often spelled gambier.
What do you want to know about Gambier?
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/gambierThe 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, “Gambier”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.