Gelber
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Gelber is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Romania than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Jewish (Ashkenazic); inflected form of Gelb.
- USUnited States1 in 379K(measured from records)
- ILIsrael1 in 12Kas גלבר
- RORomania≈1 in 11K
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 Gelber 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.
- Romania (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 245 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Romania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled גלבר in IL Israel, RO Romania, LB Lebanon.
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)
Jewish (Ashkenazic); inflected form of Gelb.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gelber 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RO Romania | #718 | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | גלבר | 5 |
| US United States | — | 878 | 1 in 379K | 927 | Gelber | 245 |
| IL Israel | — | 753as גלבר | 1 in 12K | 753 | גלבר | 35 |
| LB Lebanon | — | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | גלבר | 1 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 241K | — | Gelber | 50 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 59 | 1 in 57K | 59 | — | 1 |
| BM Bermuda | #343 | ≈3 est. | ≈1 in 28K | — | Gelber | 1 |
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 2000; CBS Israel — Family names in Israel, 2017 ("שמות משפחה בישראל 2017"); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)
Gelber 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 German, Übername zu mhd. grā 'grau' für grauhaarige Menschen; 67 Belege.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, comparative degree of gelb
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)
- Jacob Eichenbaumb. 1796UAnot in their usual nameGalician-Jewish maskil, educator, poet and mathematician
- Marvin Gelberb. 1912CACanadian politician (1912-1990)
- Arthur Gelberb. 1915CACanadian philanthropist
- Jack Gelberb. 1932USAmerican playwright (1932–2003)
- Bruno Leonardo Gelberb. 1941ARArgentine pianist
- Mark H. Gelberb. 1951USLiterary scholar
- Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchillb. 1958GBnot in their usual namenoblewoman; English interior designer and writer
- Dan Gelberb. 1960USAmerican politician
- Jordan Gelberb. 1975USAmerican actor
- Beatrice Gelberneuroscientist
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 28 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 927 | #25,098 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 914 | #27,855 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 878 | #27,452 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 59 | — |
| 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 Gelber mean, and where does it come from?
- Jewish (Ashkenazic); inflected form of Gelb. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Gelber have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.0 thousand people named Gelber in Romania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled גלבר.
- How common is the name Gelber?
- In the United States, the national register counted 878 people named Gelber in 2010, about 1 in 379 thousand residents.
- How common is Gelber compared with other names?
- In Romania, Gelber is the 718th most common surname of 78,699 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gelber?
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/gelberThe 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, “Gelber” — the 718th most common surname in Romania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.