Gillen
surname · Latin script
Meaning: patronymic from Gil, a personal name that is a much reduced and altered vernacular form of Latin Aegidius (see Giles)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈɡɪɫən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gillen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 35K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 39K
- CACanada≈1 in 46K
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
- 378 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.9K (inferred from the name graph)
8,462 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Luxembourg, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
patronymic from Gil, a personal name that is a much reduced and altered vernacular form of Latin Aegidius (see Giles).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gillen 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 | — | 8,462 | 1 in 39K | 8.5K | Gillen | 378 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 35K | 3 | Gillen | 151 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 164K | — | Gillen | 2 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 88K | — | Gillen | 4 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈890 est. | ≈1 in 299K | — | Gillen | 9 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈810 est. | ≈1 in 46K | — | Gillen | 91 |
| IE Ireland | #911 | ≈410 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Gillen | 82 |
| LU Luxembourg | #425 | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 4.9K | — | Gillen | 20 |
8,462 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 2010; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present). 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)
Gillen 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.
variant spelling of Gillan or reduced form of McGillen.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
variant of Gilbert. See also Gille 2.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Swedish, indefinite plural of gille
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Dutch, to yell, scream
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In yxg, moon
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)
- Francis James Gillenb. 1855AUAustralian anthropologist (1855-1912)
- Mollie Gillenb. 1908CACanadian/Australian writer
- Lull Gillenb. 1928LULuxembourgish bicycle racer and track cyclist (1928–2010)
- John Gillenb. 1947GBjudge; from 2014 to 2017, one of the Lords Justices of Appeal of Northern Ireland
- Mark M. Gillenb. 1955USAmerican politician
- Ray Gillenb. 1959USAmerican singer (1959–1993)
- Aidan Gillenb. 1968IEIrish actor
- Laura Gillenb. 1969USAmerican politician and attorney
- Kieron Gillenb. 1975GBBritish journalist and comics writer
- Adam Gillenb. 1985GBactor
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 29 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.5K | #4,188 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.1K | #4,056 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.8K | #4,412 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Gillen mean, and where does it come from?
- patronymic from Gil, a personal name that is a much reduced and altered vernacular form of Latin Aegidius (see Giles). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Gillen?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɡɪɫən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Gillen have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 8.5 thousand people named Gillen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gillen.
- How common is the name Gillen?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,462 people named Gillen in 2010, about 1 in 39 thousand residents.
- How common is Gillen compared with other names?
- In Luxembourg, Gillen is the 425th most common surname of 1,851 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gillen?
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/gillenThe 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, “Gillen” — the 425th most common surname in Luxembourg. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.