Gulley

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Perhaps an altered spelling of French Goulley, a variant of Goulet

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ˈɡəɫi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Gulley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 31K(measured from records)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 39K
  • CNChina≈1 in 20K

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.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈70,000 people, est.

Sources
368 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 20K (inferred from the name graph)

China, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Perhaps an altered spelling of French Goulley, a variant of Goulet. Gull! (185) Italian: patronymic or plural form of Gullo.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Where in the world(measured from records)

Gulley 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 Gulley is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China≈70,000 est.≈1 in 20K—Gulley7
US United States10,6051 in 31K11KGulley368
GB United Kingdom≈1,700 est.≈1 in 39K—Gulley85
EG Egypt≈870 est.≈1 in 119K—Gulley2
IT Italy≈730 est.≈1 in 86K—Gulley2
NZ New Zealand≈200 est.≈1 in 25K—Gulley23
IE Ireland≈190 est.≈1 in 27K—Gulley4
SG Singapore≈170 est.≈1 in 36K—Gulley2

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. 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)

Gulley is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Gülley

36 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)

Gulley 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 English, Alternative spelling of gully (Etymology 1).

    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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1850190019502000Catherine B. Gulley, b. 1869James Gulley, b. 1965Jarmar Gulley, b. 1991Kellen Gulley, b. 1994

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)

FormalDear Gulley,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 12 sources across 6 countries.

Official registers attesting Gulley
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201011K#3,366
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202010K#3,421
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200010K#3,293
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 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

Where does the name Gulley come from?
Perhaps an altered spelling of French Goulley, a variant of Goulet. Gull! (185) Italian: patronymic or plural form of Gullo. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Gulley?
A machine transcription gives /ˈɡəɫi/ (IPA) for English.
What does the name Gulley mean?
Recorded meaning: Perhaps an altered spelling of French Goulley, a variant of Goulet.
In which country does Gulley have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 70 thousand people named Gulley in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gulley.
How common is the name Gulley?
In the United States, the national register counted 10,605 people named Gulley in 2010, about 1 in 31 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Gulley?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/gulley

The 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, “Gulley”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Gulley parses inside a full name →