Gavel
surname · Latin script
Meaning: metonymic occupational name for a harvester, from javelle, a term for a sheaf of grain which was loosely bound and left on the ground to ripen
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɡævəl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gavel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 692K(measured from records)
- JMJamaica≈1 in 129K
- CACanada≈1 in 133K
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
- 162 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 129K (inferred from the name graph)
481 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Jamaica, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
metonymic occupational name for a harvester, from javelle, a term for a sheaf of grain which was loosely bound and left on the ground to ripen.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gavel 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 | 481 | 1 in 692K | 555 | Gavel | 162 |
| FR France | ≈470 est. | ≈1 in 143K | 79 | — | 1 |
| CA Canada | ≈280 est. | ≈1 in 133K | — | Gavel | 74 |
| AU Australia | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 216K | — | Gavel | 53 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈94 est. | ≈1 in 702K | — | Gavel | 17 |
| BE Belgium | 86 | 1 in 136K | 86 | Gavel | 9 |
| JM Jamaica | ≈22 est. | ≈1 in 129K | — | Gavel | 1 |
481 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; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Gavel is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Rent.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, a gable, a short wall of a building
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)
- Charlotte von Gavelb. 1833DEBaltic German painter (1833-?)
- Henri Gavelb. 1880FRFrench university teacher (1880-1960)
- Anton Gavelb. 1984SKSlovak-German basketball player
- Erica Gavelb. 1991CACanadian basketball player (1991-)
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 13 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 555 | #42,112 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 548 | #38,035 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 481 | #44,653 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 89 | — |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 86 | #17,551 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 84 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 79 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 77 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 75 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 59 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 58 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 52 | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- What does the name Gavel mean, and where does it come from?
- metonymic occupational name for a harvester, from javelle, a term for a sheaf of grain which was loosely bound and left on the ground to ripen. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Gavel?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡævəl/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Gavel have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 481 people named Gavel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gavel.
- How common is the name Gavel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 481 people named Gavel in 2010, about 1 in 692 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Gavel?
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/gavelThe 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, “Gavel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.