Gils
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɣɪls/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gils is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Belgium than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 67K(measured from records)
- USUnited States≈1 in 2.8M
- BEBelgium1 in 23K
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.
- Belgium (measured from records)
- Sources
- 109 (measured from records)
- 1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)
515 people, 2008
Highest-authority source
Belgium
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Sources 1
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gils 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BE Belgium | #933 | 515 | 1 in 23K | 515 | Gils | 69 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 292K | — | Gils | 55 |
| NL Netherlands | #195 | 259 | 1 in 67K | 259 | Gils | 97 |
| FR France | — | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 499K | 5 | Gils | 2 |
| US United States | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 2.8M | listed | Gils | 109 |
| NO Norway | — | 32 | 1 in 171K | 32 | — | 5 |
| LV Latvia | — | ≈17 est. | ≈1 in 113K | 15 | — | 1 |
515 people counted by Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register), 2008. 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: CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Gils is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In vo, nominative plural of gil
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)
- Jacobus Henrikus Jozef van Gilsb. 1910NLDutch university teacher
- Denise Gilsb. 1949FRFrench politician
- Rémy Gilsb. 1980FRFrench-Taiwanese writer and television host
- Jacob GilsDKDanish fine art photographer
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 22 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 515 | #2,919 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 502 | #3,039 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 259 | #8,018 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 32 | #34,129 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 14 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 12 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 12 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 11 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 8 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 5 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 5 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 5 | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name 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
- How do you pronounce Gils?
- A machine transcription gives /ɣɪls/ (IPA) for Dutch.
- In which country does Gils have the most bearers?
- In Belgium, the national register counted about 515 people named Gils, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gils.
- Where is Gils most common?
- Gils is densest in Belgium, where the national register counts about 1 in 23 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Gils?
- In Belgium, the national register counted 515 people named Gils in 2008, about 1 in 23 thousand residents.
- How common is Gils compared with other names?
- In Belgium, Gils is the 933rd most common surname of 246,397 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gils?
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/gilsThe 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, “Gils” — the 933rd most common surname in Belgium. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.