Goule

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Goule is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Côte d’Ivoire than in any other country. In French, recorded as ghoul (spirit; ghost).

rarermore common
  • CICôte d’Ivoire≈1 in 29K(inferred from the name graph)
  • FRFrance≈1 in 545K
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.7M

carrying the name, as Mondonomo estimates it from our sources: no national register counts it in these countries. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Côte d’Ivoire (inferred from the name graph)

≈950 people, est.

Sources
83 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 29K (inferred from the name graph)

Côte d’Ivoire, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

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 ON gulr ‘yellow, pale’, or ME goule ‘gullet, greed’; first attested John Goule 1327 SRSo

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.

How Goule is read(measured from records)

Goule is one spelling over 3 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.

  • French59%

    ghoul (spirit; ghost)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • English25%

    from ON gulr ‘yellow, pale’, or ME goule ‘gullet, greed’; first attested John Goule 1327 SRSo

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • Hindi6.6%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Goule in Hindi.

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Goule 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.

Where Goule is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CI Côte d’Ivoire≈950 est.≈1 in 29K600Goule3
FR France≈130 est.≈1 in 545K22Goule83
GB United Kingdom≈40 est.≈1 in 1.7M—Goule6
IN India——4——

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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; the in-instate-surnames-bystate 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Goule is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany

    Languages: English, German

    Also written Goulé

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Goulé

  • Arabic name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Goulé

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States

    Also written Goulé

22 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Goule is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In nrm, alternative form of dgeule

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In fro, mouth

    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.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 3 sources across 3 countries.

Official registers attesting Goule
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
CI Côte d’Ivoirenomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies—600#836
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)195127—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)199122—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)194122—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)196119—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)197117—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)193117—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)191116—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)192115—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)189113—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)190110—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19817—

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the name Goule come from?
from ON gulr ‘yellow, pale’, or ME goule ‘gullet, greed’; first attested John Goule 1327 SRSo Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
What does the name Goule mean?
In French, ghoul (spirit; ghost)
In which country does Goule have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 953 people named Goule in Côte d’Ivoire, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled goule.
How common is the name Goule?
Mondonomo estimates about 950 people in Côte d’Ivoire have Goule as their first surname, about 1 in 29 thousand residents. No national register counts it there; the figure is ours, calibrated against the registers that do.

What do you want to know about Goule?

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/goule

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Goule”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Goule parses inside a full name →