Gove
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A mow; a rick for hay
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɡoʊv/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gove is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Mozambique than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 66K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 126K
- MZMozambique≈1 in 5.1K
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.
- Mozambique (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 266 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈5,900 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Mozambique, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A mow; a rick for hay.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gove 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MZ Mozambique | #376 | ≈5,900 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | 1 | Gove | 10 |
| US United States | — | 2,636 | 1 in 126K | 2.8K | Gove | 266 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 66K | — | Gove | 113 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈400 est. | ≈1 in 140K | — | Gove | 18 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈350 est. | ≈1 in 107K | — | Gove | 47 |
| CU Cuba | — | ≈230 est. | ≈1 in 49K | — | Gove | 2 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈99 est. | ≈1 in 50K | — | Gove | 11 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 49K | — | Gove | 1 |
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; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family 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)
Gove is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Scottish variant of Gough (i).
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
variant of Goff.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Norwegian Nynorsk, past participle of gyva
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In men, adv., Kpodkolongo gove
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
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)
- Samuel F. Goveb. 1822USAmerican politician (1822-1900)
- Jesse Goveb. 1824USlawyer and colonel in the United States Army during the American Civil War (1824-1862)
- Anna Maria Goveb. 1867USAmerican physician
- Marguerite Goveb. 1877USAmerican suffragist (1877–1969)
- Cyril Goveb. 1890AUAustralian rules footballer (1890-1973)
- Philip Babcock Goveb. 1902USAmerican lexicographer (1902–1972)
- Harry Goveb. 1922CACanadian physicist
- DiAnne Goveb. 1951USAmerican politician
- Michael Goveb. 1967GBBritish politician (born 1967)
- David Goveb. 1978USAmerican ice hockey player
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 13 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.8K | #10,519 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.6K | #11,877 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.5K | #12,093 |
| MZ Mozambique | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 1 | #118 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Gove mean, and where does it come from?
- A mow; a rick for hay. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Gove?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡoʊv/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Gove have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 5.9 thousand people named Gove in Mozambique, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gove.
- How common is the name Gove?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,636 people named Gove in 2010, about 1 in 126 thousand residents.
- How common is Gove compared with other names?
- In Mozambique, Gove is the 376th most common surname of 2,021 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gove?
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/goveThe 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, “Gove” — the 376th most common surname in Mozambique. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.