Gem

loc · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Gem is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the Netherlands. Recorded meaning: Inherited from Middle English gemme, gimme, yimme, ȝimme, from Old English ġimm, from Proto-West Germanic *gimmu (“gem”) and Old French gemme (“gem”), both from Latin gemma (“a swelling bud; jewel, ge.

rarermore common
  • NLNetherlands
  • CACanada
  • USUnited States

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Netherlands (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

Sources
209 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Gem: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Gem
  1. Middle Englishgemme(measured from records)
  2. Old Englishġimm(measured from records)
  3. Proto-West Germanic*gimmu“gem”(measured from records)
  4. Latingemma“a swelling bud; jewel“a swelling bud; jewel, gem”(measured from records)

Inherited from Middle English gemme, gimme, yimme, ȝimme, from Old English ġimm, from Proto-West Germanic *gimmu (“gem”) and Old French gemme (“gem”), both from Latin gemma (“a swelling bud; jewel, gem”). Doublet of gemma and Gemma.

Sources 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
  • Wiktionary
  • Skok, Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (1971-74)

Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Gem counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where Gem is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NL Netherlands—10Gem8
US United States—507Gem209
CA Canada—2Gem58
GY Guyana—107—3
IN India—97—23

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: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Gem is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Gêm

  • a separate name6 spellings in the group

    Also written Gém, Gēm, Ğém, Gëm

60 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Gem is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In xgn-pro, 1 defect, illness, damage 2 to regret

    as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)

  • In English, A precious stone, usually of substantial monetary value or prized for its beauty or shine.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • ISO 639-2 & ISO 639-5 language code for Germanic languages.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Romanian, jam (sweet mixture of fruit boiled with sugar)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In bfg, hold, take hold of; touch

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

  • In Polish, game (part of a set)

    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)

18001850190019502000Harry Gem, b. 1819Adolphe Jaime, b. 1825Gem Hoahing, b. 1920Gem Souleyman, b. 1987

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 27 sources across 18 countries.

Official registers attesting Gem
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—185#2,439
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—97#28,897
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 Gem mean, and where does it come from?
Inherited from Middle English gemme, gimme, yimme, ȝimme, from Old English ġimm, from Proto-West Germanic *gimmu (“gem”) and Old French gemme (“gem”), both from Latin gemma (“a swelling bud; jewel, ge… Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples) and 2 other sources.
In which country does Gem have the most bearers?
Gem is most frequently recorded in the Netherlands, where it is most often spelled gem.

What do you want to know about Gem?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/gem

The 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, “Gem”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Gem parses inside a full name →