Gaël
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Gaël is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Possibly a contraction of Gwenaël or Judicaël. By folk etymology interpreted as "a Gael".
- BRBrazil1 in 1.9K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.1Kas Gail
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.1Kas Gail
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 Gaël 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- #460 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 553 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
165,125 named Gail, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Gail in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CA Canada and 3 more and Gael in BR Brazil, EC Ecuador.
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)
Possibly a contraction of Gwenaël or Judicaël. By folk etymology interpreted as "a Gael".
Sources 2
Attested across 27 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gaël 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 | #223 | 165,125as Gail | 1 in 2K | 162K | Gail | 553 |
| BR Brazil | — | 110,946 | 1 in 1.9K | 111K | Gael | 56 |
| GB United Kingdom | #205 | ≈59,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 3 | Gail | 257 |
| CA Canada | #198 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 3 | Gail | 241 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | — | Gail | 18 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 11,486 | 1 in 1.5K | 11K | Gael | 18 |
| IE Ireland | #148 | ≈4,600 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Gail | 62 |
| NZ New Zealand | #176 | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 15 | Gail | 110 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 3,109as Gal | 1 in 676 | 3.2K | — | 15 |
165,125 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; INEC — civil registry names; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); SURS — resident population given names; 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)
- Gaël Morelb. 1972FRFrench actor and director
- Gaël Givetb. 1981FRFrench footballer (born 1981)
- Gaël Danicb. 1981FRFrench footballer
- Gaël Fayeb. 1982FRburundi-rwandan-french singer and writer
- Gaël Clichyb. 1985FRFrench footballer and manager (born 1985)
- Gaël Monfilsb. 1986FRFrench tennis player (born 1986)
- Gaël Kakutab. 1991FRFrench-Congolese footballer (born 1991)
- Gaël Bigirimanab. 1993BIBurundian footballer
- Gaël Ondouab. 1995CMCameroonian association football player
- Maxime-Gaël Ngayap Hamboub. 2001FRFrench judoka
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 24 sources across 18 countries.
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Gaël mean, and where does it come from?
- Possibly a contraction of Gwenaël or Judicaël. By folk etymology interpreted as "a Gael". Recorded by Wiktionary and Nordic Names.
- Is Gaël a male or female name?
- Gaël is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- What are other forms of the name Gaël?
- In the etymology graph, Gwenaël is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Gaël have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 165 thousand people named Gail, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Gaël most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Gaël is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 1.5 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Gaël?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 110,946 people named Gaël in 2022, about 1 in 1.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Gaël compared with other names?
- In the United States, Gaël is the 223rd most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gaël?
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/ga%C3%ABlThe 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, “Gaël” — the 223rd most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.