Garb
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Garb is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In English, recorded as Fashion, style of dressing oneself up.
- USUnited States1 in 1M(measured from records)
- SISlovenia1 in 64K
- PLPoland1 in 319K
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
- 147 (measured from records)
- 1 in 64K (inferred from the name graph)
332 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Slovenia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from a short form of a personal name formed with Old High German ger ‘spear’, ‘lance’. Compare Gerhardt.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Garb is read(measured from records)
Garb is one spelling over 3 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.
- English77%
Fashion, style of dressing oneself up.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Polish8.3%
hump (rounded fleshy mass)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German5.9%
from a short form of a personal name formed with Old High German ger ‘spear’, ‘lance’. Compare Gerhardt.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
descriptive nickname from Polish garb ‘hump’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
occupational name for a tanner, from the dialect word garb, Middle High German garwe. See also Gerber.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Garb 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 | 332 | 1 in 1M | 333 | Garb | 147 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈320 est. | ≈1 in 672K | — | Garb | 14 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 376K | — | Garb | 10 |
| KE Kenya | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 360K | — | Garb | 1 |
| PL Poland | 120 | 1 in 319K | 64 | — | — |
| SI Slovenia | 33 | 1 in 64K | 33 | — | 1 |
| AT Austria | ≈15 est. | ≈1 in 593K | — | Garb | 6 |
332 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Tamar Garbb. 1956GBBritish art historian
- Margaret Garbb. 1962USAmerican historian and prison education advocate
- Jonathan Garbb. 1967ILIsraeli scholar
- Maja GarbSIresearcher
- Gregor GarbSIresearcher
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 15 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 333 | #64,521 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 332 | #60,636 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 309 | #60,887 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 64 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 64 | #41,606 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 56 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 56 | #46,378 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 33 | #10,092 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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 Garb mean?
- In English, Fashion, style of dressing oneself up.
- Where does the name Garb come from?
- from a short form of a personal name formed with Old High German ger ‘spear’, ‘lance’. Compare Gerhardt. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Garb have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 332 people named Garb, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled garb.
- Where is Garb most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Garb is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 64 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Garb?
- In the United States, the national register counted 332 people named Garb in 2010, about 1 in 1.0 million residents.
What do you want to know about Garb?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/garbThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Garb”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.