Gelly
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: a pet-form of Gellion, i.e. Gillian; first attested Gelleia (f) 1221 Cur (Ha)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ʒi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gelly is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 51K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 3.2M
- GDGrenada1 in 113K
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.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 182 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 51K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,300 people, est.
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
a pet-form of Gellion, i.e. Gillian; first attested Gelleia (f) 1221 Cur (Ha)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
How Gelly is read(measured from records)
Gelly is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- French69%
Altération de Gély, même origine que Gilles.
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
- English19%
a pet-form of Gellion, i.e. Gillian; first attested Gelleia (f) 1221 Cur (Ha)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Obsolete form of jelly.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish6.2%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Gelly in Spanish.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Gelly 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 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 51K | 128 | Gelly | 182 |
| US United States | 104 | 1 in 3.2M | 132 | Gelly | 100 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈81 est. | ≈1 in 814K | — | Gelly | 39 |
| CA Canada | ≈73 est. | ≈1 in 515K | — | Gelly | 23 |
| GH Ghana | ≈66 est. | ≈1 in 443K | — | Gelly | 5 |
| JM Jamaica | ≈18 est. | ≈1 in 153K | — | Gelly | 3 |
| GD Grenada | 1 | 1 in 113K | 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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025. 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)
Gelly is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In enm, alternative form of gele
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)
- Juan Andrés Gellyb. 1792PYParaguayan diplomat, politician and lawyer
- Juan Andrés Gelly y Obesb. 1815ARArgentinian military personnel
- Michel Gellyb. 1863FRFrench art educator and watercolorist
- Carlos María Gelly y Obesb. 1923ARArgentinian historian
- Dave Gellyb. 1938GBBritish music writer
- Guy Gellyb. 1950FRFrench politician
- Bertrand Gellyb. 1973FRFrench politician
- Jean-Christophe Gellyb. 1974FRresearcher
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 26 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 218 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 213 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 201 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 193 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 190 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 182 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 177 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 151 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 132 | #133,220 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 132 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 128 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1891 | 126 | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Gelly mean, and where does it come from?
- a pet-form of Gellion, i.e. Gillian; first attested Gelleia (f) 1221 Cur (Ha) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Gelly?
- A machine transcription gives /ʒi/ (IPA) for French.
- In which country does Gelly have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.3 thousand people named Gelly in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gelly.
- How common is the name Gelly?
- In the United States, the national register counted 104 people named Gelly in 2010, about 1 in 3.2 million residents.
What do you want to know about Gelly?
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/gellyThe 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, “Gelly”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.