Giffard
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: either from a nickname for a fat person, or from the Germanic personal name Gifard, a form of Gebhardt
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ʒifaʁ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Giffard is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in France.
- FRFrance
- USUnited States
- AUAustralia
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.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
either from a nickname for a fat person, or from the Germanic personal name Gifard, a form of Gebhardt
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
How Giffard is read(measured from records)
Giffard 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.
- French68%
Henry Giffard (1825-1882), ingénieur français, inventa un dirigeable mû par une machine à vapeur en 1852 et, en 1858, un injecteur de vapeur pour l’alimentation des chaudières qu’on appelle injecteur Giffard ou giffard tout simplement.
as a name2500 noms propres devenus communs : dictionnaire étymologique (éponymes, antonomases et hypallages)
- English24%
either from a nickname for a fat person, or from the Germanic personal name Gifard, a form of Gebhardt
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
from Old German/Gaulish "gifard" or Old French "giffard" ‘chubby-cheeked, bloated’; first attested Gifardus 1086 Domesday Book, Hampshire
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
- Spanish5.3%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Giffard 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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Walter Giffard, 1st Earl of Buckinghamb. 1038Anglo-Norman magnate
- Walter Giffard, 2nd Earl of Buckinghamb. 1085English noble
- William Giffardb. 1100GBLord Chancellor of England of William II and Henry I
- Walter Giffardb. 1225GBLord Chancellor; Bishop of Bath; Archbishop of York
- Godfrey Giffardb. 1235Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Chancellor of England; Bishop of Worcester
- Stanley Lees Giffardb. 1788IEBritish newspaper editor
- Hardinge Giffard, 1st Earl of Halsburyb. 1823GBBritish politician (1823-1921)
- Henri Giffardb. 1825FRFrench engineer (1825-1882)
- Pierre Giffardb. 1853FRFrench journalist (1853-1922)
- George Giffardb. 1886GBBritish Army general
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 12 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 302 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 293 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 259 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 250 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 246 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 234 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 229 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 211 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 166 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 164 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1891 | 95 | — |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 40 | #35,171 |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Giffard mean, and where does it come from?
- either from a nickname for a fat person, or from the Germanic personal name Gifard, a form of Gebhardt Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Giffard?
- A machine transcription gives /ʒifaʁ/ (IPA) for French.
- In which country does Giffard have the most bearers?
- Giffard is most frequently recorded in France.
What do you want to know about Giffard?
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/giffardThe 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, “Giffard”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.