Gillett
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) Also Gillatt or Gillet, ‘little Gill’; (ii) someone living at the top of a ravine, from Middle English gilheved ‘ravine-head’
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 11 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Gillett is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 13K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 21K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 27Kfew records
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)
- Record sources
- 349 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 13K (inferred from the name graph)
5,293 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)(i) Also Gillatt or Gillet, ‘little Gill’; (ii) someone living at the top of a ravine, from Middle English gilheved ‘ravine-head’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Gillett is found
(measured from records)Gillett 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 | 5,293 | 1 in 63K | 5.3K | Gillett | 349 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 21K | listed | Gillett | 186 |
| AU Australia | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Gillett | 153 |
| CA Canada | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 36K | — | Gillett | 105 |
| IN India | ≈390 est. | ≈1 in 3.7M | — | Gillett | 11 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Gillett | 48 |
| IE Ireland | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 39K | — | Gillett | 30 |
5,293 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; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register. 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)Gillett is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, 1. from a pet form of the personal names Giles, Julian, or William (see Gill 1). 2. topographic name for someone living at the top of a glen or ravine, from northern Middle English gil(l) ‘glen’ + heved ‘head’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Julian, or William; see Gill i. 2. topographic name for someone living at the top of a glen or ravine, from
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, A surname originating as a patronymic.
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)- Burt Gillettb. 1891USAmerican animator (1891–1971)
- Aden Gillettb. 1958GBBritish actor
- Tyler Gillettb. 1982USAmerican film director, cinematographer, writer and producer
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)21 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 11 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Gillett mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) Also Gillatt or Gillet, ‘little Gill’; (ii) someone living at the top of a ravine, from Middle English gilheved ‘ravine-head’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Gillett?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 5.3 thousand people named Gillett, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gillett. After it come United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and India; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Gillett?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,293 people named Gillett in 2010, about 1 in 63 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Gillett?
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/gillettThe 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, “Gillett”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.