Gosling
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From a medieval nickname likening someone to a gosling; also a different form of Jocelyn
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɡɑzlɪŋ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gosling is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 18K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 31K
- CACanada≈1 in 84K
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 Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 211 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 18K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,600 people, est.
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
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(measured from records)
From a medieval nickname likening someone to a gosling; also a different form of Jocelyn.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gosling 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 18K | listed | Gosling | 198 |
| AU Australia | ≈810 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | Gosling | 114 |
| US United States | 681 | 1 in 488K | 708 | Gosling | 211 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈550 est. | ≈1 in 102K | — | Gosling | 30 |
| CA Canada | ≈450 est. | ≈1 in 84K | — | Gosling | 111 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈94 est. | ≈1 in 52K | — | Gosling | 51 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | 1 | 1 in 54K | 1 | — | 2 |
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: the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026. 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)
Gosling 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, from ME goslyng ‘gosling’; first attested Henry Goseling 1260 AssC
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, nickname from Middle English gosling ‘young goose’ (from Old English gos + the Germanic suffix -ling, partly in imitation of Old Norse gceslingr from gas).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, from a short form of a Germanic personal name formed with god, got ‘god’ or god ‘good’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, 2. nickname from ME gosling young goose (from OE gos + the Gmc suffix -ling (cf., e.g., Chamberlain), partly in imitation of ON goeslingr from gas). Vars. (mainly of 1): Gossling, Goseling, Gostling, Gos(se)lin, Gosland. Cogn. (of 1): Fr.: Gosselin.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, A young goose.
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)
- Harry Goslingb. 1861GBBritish politician (1861-1930)
- William Goslingb. 1869GBEnglish footballer (1869-1952)
- Raymond Goslingb. 1926GBBritish physicist (1926-2015)
- Paula Goslingb. 1939USAmerican writer
- James Goslingb. 1955CACanadian computer scientist
- Joanna Goslingb. 1971GBBritish journalist and presenter
- Sarah Webbb. 1977GBnot in their usual nameBritish sailor
- Ryan Goslingb. 1980CACanadian actor (born 1980)
- Daniel Goslingb. 1990GBEnglish association football player
- Jake Goslingb. 1993GBBritish footballer (born 1993)
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 28 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 708 | #34,480 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 681 | #33,499 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 626 | #34,259 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 1 | #181 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- 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 given-name tokens
- 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 Gosling mean, and where does it come from?
- From a medieval nickname likening someone to a gosling; also a different form of Jocelyn. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Gosling?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡɑzlɪŋ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Gosling have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.6 thousand people named Gosling in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gosling.
- How common is the name Gosling?
- In the United States, the national register counted 681 people named Gosling in 2010, about 1 in 488 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Gosling?
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/goslingThe 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, “Gosling”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.