Gautier
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Germanic wald + heri, 'rule' + 'army'; St Gautier
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 24 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/ɡo.tje/(recorded in a dictionary) French · from Wiktionary
Gautier is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country, where it is the 62nd most common surname.
- FRFrance≈1 in 1.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- GAGabon≈1 in 8.2K
- CFCentral African Republic≈1 in 10K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 335 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈39,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)From Germanic wald + heri, 'rule' + 'army'; St Gautier.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Gautier is found
(measured from records)Gautier 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #62 | ≈39,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | 8.8K | Gautier | 335 |
| US United States | — | 2,505 | 1 in 133K | 2.5K | Gautier | 232 |
| CF Central African Republic | — | ≈520 est. | ≈1 in 10K | 1 | — | 2 |
| BE Belgium | — | 456 | 1 in 26K | 456 | Gautier | 56 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | — | ≈410 est. | ≈1 in 267K | 1 | — | 10 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 384 | 1 in 22K | 384 | Gautier | 42 |
| GA Gabon | — | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 8.2K | 7 | — | 5 |
| RE Réunion | — | ≈68 est. | ≈1 in 12K | 5 | — | 11 |
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 prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Ministere de l'Interieur — 2025 candidate lists (local + legislative); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion); ANE — Liste provisoire des candidats (legislatives & regionales 2025); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)Gautier 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 French, from Germanic *wald- 'rule' + *hari- 'army'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In French, variant of Gauthier. In this spelling, the name has been established in both Italy (Turin) and Germany (Brunswick) since about 1700.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In French, a male given name, equivalent to English Walter
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, Du germanique *wald* « gouverner » + *hari* « armée ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, Origine germanique, signifie « qui gouverne l'armée ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
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)- Théophile Gautierb. 1811FRFrench poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic (1811–1872)
- Judith Gautierb. 1845FRFrench poet and historical novelist (1845-1917)
- Mylène Farmerb. 1961CAnot in their usual nameFrench singer and songwriter (born 1961)
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)49 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 24 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Gautier mean, and where does it come from?
- From Germanic wald + heri, 'rule' + 'army'; St Gautier. Recorded by Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms.
- What are other forms of the name Gautier?
- In the etymology graph, Gauthier, Walther and Wolter are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Gautier?
- In French /ɡo.tje/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Gautier?
- Mondonomo estimates about 39 thousand people named Gautier in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gautier. After it come United States, Central African Republic, Belgium and Congo - Kinshasa; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Gautier?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,505 people named Gautier in 2010, about 1 in 133 thousand residents.
- How common is Gautier compared with other names?
- In France, Gautier is the 62nd most common surname of 1,200,812 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gautier?
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/gautierThe 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, “Gautier” — the 62nd most common surname in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.