Gila
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Mad; crazy; insane
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Gila is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- ILIsrael≈1 in 13K(inferred from the name graph)
- UYUruguay1 in 51K
- ATAustria≈1 in 148K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 79 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 13K (inferred from the name graph)
879 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Israel, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Mad; crazy; insane.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gila 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 879 | 1 in 378K | 872 | Gila | 62 |
| IL Israel | — | ≈650 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Gila | 22 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 357K | — | Gila | 18 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 481K | — | Gila | 6 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 545K | listed | Gila | 10 |
| UY Uruguay | #879 | 67 | 1 in 51K | 67 | Gila | 5 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈60 est. | ≈1 in 148K | 11 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | — | 36 | 1 in 283K | 36 | — | 2 |
| NO Norway | — | ≈20 est. | ≈1 in 277K | 22 | — | 2 |
879 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE Uruguay — Nombres más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024). 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)
Gila 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, river, US; county, AZ
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Let this live.
as a nameThe African book of names
In poz-pro, wild; skittish; insane
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In sjm, a wild jerking movement (as an animal when not wanting to have someone mount it or attach a cart to it); inappropriate behavior or words
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Sundanese, shy, fearful, shuddering (as when confronted with hot water, an enemy, etc.; wild, savage (out of fear), beside oneself
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)
- Gil Álvarez de Albornozb. 1310ESnot in their usual name14th century Spanish cardinal, archbishop, Chancellor of Toledo and ecclesiastical leader
- Gil Evansb. 1912CAnot in their usual nameAmerican composer, arranger, bandleader, and pianist (1912–1988)
- Gil Kaneb. 1926USnot in their usual nameAmerican comic book artist (1926–2000)
- Gila Almagorb. 1939ILIsraeli actress and writer
- Gil Gerardb. 1943USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor (1943–2025)
- Gila von Weitershausenb. 1944DEGerman actress
- Gil Birminghamb. 1953USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
- Gil Jungerb. 1954USnot in their usual nameAmerican director
- Gil Bellowsb. 1967CAnot in their usual nameCanadian actor
- Gil Kenanb. 1976GBnot in their usual nameBritish-American-Israeli film director
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 51 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 4 | #56,985 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Gila mean, and where does it come from?
- Mad; crazy; insane. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Gila a male or female name?
- Gila is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Gila have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 879 people named Gila, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gila.
- How common is the name Gila?
- In the United States, the national register counted 879 people named Gila in 2020, about 1 in 378 thousand residents.
- How common is Gila compared with other names?
- In Uruguay, Gila is the 879th most common given name of 12,212 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gila?
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/gilaThe 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, “Gila” — the 879th most common given name in Uruguay. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.