Gil

surname · Latin script

Meaning: from Slavic gil ‘bullfinch’, probably a nickname for a simpleton

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

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

Gil is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country, where it is the 25th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • VEVenezuela≈1 in 320(inferred from the name graph)
  • ESSpain1 in 360
  • DODominican Republic≈1 in 489

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Gil itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Spain (measured from records)

139,109 people

#676 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

Sources
386 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 320 (inferred from the name graph)

Venezuela, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled 길 in KR South Korea.

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)

from Slavic gil ‘bullfinch’, probably a nickname for a simpleton.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Gil 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 Gil is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ES Spain#25139,1091 in 360139KGil250
VE Venezuela#55≈89,000 est.≈1 in 320—Gil107
CO Colombia#85≈81,000 est.≈1 in 60958Gil171
US United States—74,948as Gill1 in 4.4K76KGil386
KR South Korea#6138,173as 길1 in 1.4K38K길107
DO Dominican Republic#54≈21,000 est.≈1 in 489—Gil84
GY Guyana—565as Gill1 in 1.3K565——

139,109 people counted by INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); the co-datosgov-candidates register; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 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)

Gil is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Philippines, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Gil', Gǐl, Gîl, Gíl

  • French surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Spain, Belgium

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Gil', Gïl, Giĺ

  • Polish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, Spain, United Kingdom

    Also written Ğïļ, Gïl, Gíl

  • a separate name6 spellings in the group

    Also written Gīl, Ğil, Gíl, Gil'

  • Hebrew given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Israel, United States, Spain, France

    Also written גיל, Gill, Guyl, Geel

88 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)

Gil 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.

  • From Latin Aegidus. See }Gilles in French supplement and English }Giles in main dictionary.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • from the personal name Gil, from French Gille(s), from Latin Aegidius (see Giles).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Spanish, naive, innocent, dumb, dummy

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

  • Brasil, Campo Maior, Arronches, Braga, Vila Viçosa, Portugal; Inquisiçâo de Lisboa

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

  • In Spanish, Del latín medieval Aegidius, 'Egidio'.

    as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios

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)

18501900195020002050Emilio Portes Gil, b. 1890Amrita Sher-Gil, b. 1913Jesús Gil y Gil, b. 1933Gilberto Gil, b. 1942Goa Gil, b. 1951Ariadna Gil, b. 1969Jesús Gil Manzano, b. 1984Camilo Vargas, b. 1989Javi Galán, b. 1994Bryan Gil, b. 2001

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)

FormalEstimado/a Gil,Dear Gil, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Gil,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 96 sources across 44 countries.

Official registers attesting Gil
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—139K#27
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—139K#27
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202027K#1,274
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201026K#1,353
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200019K#1,691
CO ColombiaColombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co)—58#60

Reference works 8

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 Gil mean, and where does it come from?
from Slavic gil ‘bullfinch’, probably a nickname for a simpleton. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Gil?
A machine transcription gives /xil/ (IPA) for Spanish.
How common is the name Gil?
In Spain, the national register counted 139,109 people named Gil, about 1 in 360 residents.
How common is Gil compared with other names?
In Spain, Gil is the 25th most common surname of 395,154 surnames recorded there.
What are other forms of the name Gil?
In the etymology graph, Giles and Gillis are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Gil have the most bearers?
In Spain, the national register counted about 139 thousand people named Gil, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gil.

What do you want to know about Gil?

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/gil

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, “Gil” — the 25th most common surname in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Gil parses inside a full name →