Gervais

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: from the Norman male personal name Gervase

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ʒɝˈveɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Gervais is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • CACanada≈1 in 6.3K(inferred from the name graph)
  • FRFrance≈1 in 7.8K
  • USUnited States1 in 64K

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)

≈8,700 people, est.

Sources
283 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 6.3K (inferred from the name graph)

Canada, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

from the Norman male personal name Gervase.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.

How Gervais is read(measured from records)

Gervais is one spelling over 2 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.

  • English51%

    from the Norman male personal name Gervase.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

  • French41%

    a male given name, equivalent to English Gervase

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

    Altération de Gervaise, même origine que Gervais.

    as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition

    En argot, un gervais est un demi-sel, c’est-à-dire un petit truand sans envergure, quelqu’un qui n’est pas vraiment « salé », un faux dur. Le recours à la marque déposée s’explique aisément puisque Gervais produit du fromage demi-sel.

    as a name2500 noms propres devenus communs : dictionnaire étymologique (éponymes, antonomases et hypallages)

    D’origine germanique; souvent rattaché à *gar* « lance » et *was* « serviteur » ou apparenté.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

    Origine germanique, signifie « lance audacieuse ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

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)

Gervais 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.

Where Gervais is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FR France#466≈8,700 est.≈1 in 7.8K4.9KGervais283
CA Canada—≈6,000 est.≈1 in 6.3K—Gervais186
US United States—5,2331 in 64K5.2KGervais195
GB United Kingdom—≈1,300 est.≈1 in 50K—Gervais40
BI Burundi—≈980 est.≈1 in 12K1—8
MQ Martinique—≈19 est.≈1 in 23K5—6
GP Guadeloupe—≈17 est.≈1 in 26K5—3

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 prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 972 (Martinique); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 971 (Guadeloupe); CENI — Liste nominative definitive des candidats deputes 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

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

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Gervàis

  • Arabic surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Egypt, Canada, United Arab Emirates

    Also written Gérvais

63 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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

16001700180019002000Charles-Hubert Gervais, b. 1671Paul Gervais, b. 1816Alfred Gervais, b. 1837Paul Gervais, b. 1859Pierre Gervais, b. 1870Élisa Blanc, b. 1883Gaétan Gervais, b. 1944Ricky Gervais, b. 1961Bruno Gervais, b. 1984Bianca Gervais, b. 1985

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)

FormalDear Mr Gervais,
InformalHi Gervais,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 51 sources across 29 countries.

Official registers attesting Gervais
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020105.2K#6,488
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020205.2K#6,320
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020004.9K#6,350
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19911.1K—
US United Stateswru 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 given-name tokens
  • 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 Gervais mean, and where does it come from?
from the Norman male personal name Gervase. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
What are other forms of the name Gervais?
In the etymology graph, Gervas and Gervase are forms of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Gervais?
A machine transcription gives /ʒɝˈveɪ/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Gervais have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 8.7 thousand people named Gervais in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gervais.
How common is the name Gervais?
In the United States, the national register counted 5,233 people named Gervais in 2010, about 1 in 64 thousand residents.
How common is Gervais compared with other names?
In France, Gervais is the 466th most common surname of 1,200,812 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Gervais?

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

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, “Gervais” — the 466th most common surname in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Gervais parses inside a full name →