Goy
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in French: from the Old French word goi (Latin gubia) denoting a type of bill hook or knife used by vine-growers or coopers, hence possibly a metonymic occupational name for a maker or user of such implements (Dictionary of American Family Names)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 18 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/ˈɡoi/(recorded in a dictionary) Spanish · from Wiktionary
Goy is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- CHSwitzerland1 in 18K(measured from records)
- FRFrance≈1 in 25K
- ARArgentina1 in 40K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 220 (measured from records)
- 1 in 18K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,800 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Göy in TR Türkiye.
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.
How to pronounce Goy
- Spanish:/ˈɡoi/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
- English:/ɡɔɪ/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from Gouy (Aisne, Pas-de-Calais, Seine-Maritime); first attested Robert le Goiz 1201 Cur
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Goy is read
(measured from records)Goy is one spelling over 4 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.
- French35%
from the Old French word goi (Latin gubia) denoting a type of bill hook or knife used by vine-growers or coopers, hence possibly a metonymic occupational name for a maker or user of such implements.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
habitational name from any of various places in France named Gouy, for example in Aisne or Pas-de-Calais.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
probably a habitational name from Goy in Lugo province, Galicia.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
northwestern variant of Gau.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
- Spanish25%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Goy in Spanish.
- English25%
from Gouy (Aisne, Pas-de-Calais, Seine-Maritime); first attested Robert le Goiz 1201 Cur
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
A non-Jew, a gentile.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German5.9%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Goy in German.
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 the surname Goy is found
(measured from records)Goy 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 25K | 318 | Goy | 220 |
| AR Argentina | 1,135 | 1 in 40K | 1.1K | — | 1 |
| TR Türkiye | ≈790 est. | ≈1 in 108K | — | Göy | 15 |
| US United States | 537 | 1 in 619K | 589 | Goy | 43 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈490 est. | ≈1 in 73K | — | Goy | 5 |
| CH Switzerland | 462 | 1 in 18K | 462 | Goy | 35 |
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); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Peter Goyb. 1938GBEnglish footballer (born 1938)
- Luba Goyb. 1945CACanadian actress and comedian
- Miečysław Hojb. 1963BYnot in their usual nameBelarusian politician
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)32 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 18 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Goy come from?
- from Gouy (Aisne, Pas-de-Calais, Seine-Maritime); first attested Robert le Goiz 1201 Cur Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Goy?
- It depends on the language: in Spanish /ˈɡoi/ (Wiktionary); in English /ɡɔɪ/ (Wiktionary).
- What does the name Goy mean?
- In French, from the Old French word goi (Latin gubia) denoting a type of bill hook or knife used by vine-growers or coopers, hence possibly a metonymic occupational name for a maker or user of such implements.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Goy?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.8 thousand people named Goy in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled goy. After it come Argentina, Türkiye, United States and Malaysia; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Goy most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Goy is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 18 thousand people — even though France holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Goy?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 1,135 people named Goy, about 1 in 40 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Goy?
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/goyThe 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, “Goy”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.