Gouin
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in French: nickname for a person with fair hair or a light complexion, from gwen ‘light’, ‘white’, ‘fair’. See also Gwynn. A bearer of the name Gouin, from Poitou, was in Trois Rivieres, Quebec, by 1663
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɡwɛ̃/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gouin is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 244K(measured from records)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 300K
- BEBelgium1 in 1.2M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 30 (measured from records)
- 1 in 244K (inferred from the name graph)
1,365 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
nickname for a person with fair hair or a light complexion, from gwen ‘light’, ‘white’, ‘fair’. See also Gwynn. A bearer of the name Gouin, from Poitou, was in Trois Rivieres, Quebec, by 1663.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
How Gouin is read(measured from records)
Gouin is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- French60%
nickname for a person with fair hair or a light complexion, from gwen ‘light’, ‘white’, ‘fair’. See also Gwynn. A bearer of the name Gouin, from Poitou, was in Trois Rivieres, Quebec, by 1663.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
a surname from Norman
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
soit du nom germanique Godwin, de god « dieu » et win « ami », ou la même origine que Godin
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
- English35%
A surname. of French origin
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gouin 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 | 1,365 | 1 in 244K | 1.8K | Gouin | 30 |
| CH Switzerland | 28 | 1 in 300K | 28 | — | 1 |
| AR Argentina | 25 | 1 in 1.8M | 25 | Gouin | 17 |
| BE Belgium | 10 | 1 in 1.2M | 10 | — | — |
| ES Spain | 7 | 1 in 7.1M | 7 | Gouin | 5 |
| CR Costa Rica | 1 | 1 in 5.1M | 1 | — | 1 |
1,365 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)
Gouin 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 Breton, gaine
as a wordDeshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)
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)
- Jacques Gouin de Beauchêneb. 1652FRFrench explorer
- François Gouinb. 1831FRFrench educator
- Lomer Gouinb. 1861CACanadian politician (1861-1929)
- Raymond Gouinb. 1888FRFrench association football player (1888–1954)
- Léon Mercier Gouinb. 1891CACanadian politician, lawyer and writer (1891–1983)
- Paul Gouinb. 1898CACanadian politician (1898–1976)
- Thérèse Gouin Décarieb. 1923CACanadian academic and psychologist (1923–2024)
- Roger Gouinb. 1950CACanadian businessman
- Benoît Gouinb. 1961CACanadian actor
- Mickaël Gouinb. 1983CACanadian actor
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 18 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.8K | #14,737 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.4K | #19,731 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.3K | #21,062 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 28 | #28,759 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 25 | — |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 10 | #70,422 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 7 | #143,513 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 1 | #20,806 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Gouin mean, and where does it come from?
- nickname for a person with fair hair or a light complexion, from gwen ‘light’, ‘white’, ‘fair’. See also Gwynn. A bearer of the name Gouin, from Poitou, was in Trois Rivieres, Quebec, by 1663. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Gouin?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡwɛ̃/ (IPA) for French.
- In which country does Gouin have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.4 thousand people named Gouin, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gouin.
- Where is Gouin most common?
- Gouin is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 244 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Gouin?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,365 people named Gouin in 2010, about 1 in 244 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Gouin?
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/gouinThe 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, “Gouin”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.