Gough
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Jewish surname of unknown origin and meaning
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɡɒf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gough is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.1Kas Bishop(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 2.1Kas Bishop
- AUAustralia≈1 in 2.4Kas Bishop
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Gough itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #725 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 548 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.1K (inferred from the name graph)
116,618 named Bishop, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est., as Bishop
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Bishop in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 5 more.
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)
Jewish surname of unknown origin and meaning.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gough 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 | #225 | 116,618as Bishop | 1 in 2.9K | 117K | Bishop | 548 |
| GB United Kingdom | #117 | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | 4.3K | Bishop | 284 |
| ZA South Africa | #341 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | — | Bishop | 73 |
| CA Canada | #178 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 8 | Bishop | 230 |
| IT Italy | #375 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | listed | Bishop | 38 |
| AU Australia | #143 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | 1 | Bishop | 217 |
| NZ New Zealand | #135 | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Bishop | 138 |
| IE Ireland | #173 | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Bishop | 80 |
116,618 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Gough 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 Welsh coch ‘red’; first attested Robert Gogh 1287 AssCh
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
1.'Welsh: nickname for a red-haired person, from Welsh coch ‘red’. 2. Irish: reduced form of McGough.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, square, London; pers. name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Pelirrojo
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
In Irish, Goch. A Welsh family called Coch ( coch, red) came to Ireland in the thirteenth century and settled in Co. Waterford and Dublin. This family has been closely identified with the Irish national cause, especially in the seventeenth century. The name Gough is occasionally a synonym of MacGeough. Bibl. MIF
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)
- Hugh Gough, 1st Viscount Goughb. 1779IEBritish field marshal (1779-1869)
- Hubert Goughb. 1870GBBritish Army general (1870–1963)
- Lloyd Goughb. 1907USAmerican theater, film, and television actor (1907-1984)
- Michael Goughb. 1916GBEnglish actor (1916–2011)
- Michael Goughb. 1956USAmerican voice actor (born 1956)
- Richard Goughb. 1962GBScottish footballer (born 1962)
- Alfred Goughb. 1967USAmerican screenwriter and producer
- Denise Goughb. 1980IEIrish actress
- Alex Goughb. 1987CACanadian luger
- Regan Goughb. 1996NZNew Zealand track cyclist
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 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.6K | #4,132 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.5K | #4,073 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.4K | #3,881 |
| GB United Kingdom | Welsh Surnames (Morgan & Morgan, 1985) | — | — | — |
| 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 Gough mean, and where does it come from?
- Jewish surname of unknown origin and meaning. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Gough?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡɒf/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Gough have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 117 thousand people named Bishop, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Gough?
- In the United States, the national register counted 116,618 people named Bishop in 2010, about 1 in 2.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Gough compared with other names?
- In the United States, Gough is the 225th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gough?
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/goughThe 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, “Gough” — the 225th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.