Gibbon
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) little Gibb; (ii) from the Germanic male personal name Getwine, literally 'gift-friend'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɡɪbən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gibbon is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
(i) little Gibb; (ii) from the Germanic male personal name Getwine, literally 'gift-friend'.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gibbon counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 1.4K | — |
| BR Brazil | — | 174 | — |
| AR Argentina | — | 93 | — |
| NL Netherlands | — | 81 | — |
| ES Spain | — | 18 | — |
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 2000; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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)
Gibbon is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Patronymic from the medieval first name Gilbert, from Germanic gisel ‘pledge’ + beraht ‘bright’; form based on Gib.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, from the medieval personal name Gibbon, a pet form of Gibb.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A small ape of the family Hylobatidae with long limbs, which it uses to travel through rainforests by swinging from branch to branch.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Edward, English historian
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Dutch, gibbon, primate of the family Hylobatidae
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)
- Edward Gibbonb. 1737GBEnglish historian and politician (1737–1794)
- John Gibbonb. 1827USUnion Army General (1827–1896)
- John Murray Gibbonb. 1875CACanadian historian (1875–1952)
- John Heysham Gibbonb. 1903USAmerican surgeon (1903–1973)
- Joe Gibbonb. 1935USAmerican baseball player
- Mike Gibbonb. 1942GBBritish television director and producer
- Roger Gibbonb. 1944TTTrinidadian racing cyclist
- Malcolm Gibbonb. 1950GBBritish footballer (born 1950)
- Mark Gibbonb. 1967CACanadian actor and voice artist
- Matt Gibbonb. 1995AUAustralian rugby union player
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 23 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.4K | #18,288 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.4K | #19,716 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.3K | #20,336 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 174 | #41,199 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 93 | — |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 81 | #22,364 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 18 | #88,854 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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)
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 Gibbon mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) little Gibb; (ii) from the Germanic male personal name Getwine, literally 'gift-friend'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Gibbon?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡɪbən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Gibbon have the most bearers?
- Gibbon is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Gibbon?
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/gibbonThe 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, “Gibbon”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.