Gāo
surname · Latin script
Gāo is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States. Recorded meaning: Chinese surname, from 高 (gāo).
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)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)Chinese surname, from 高 (gāo).
Cited for this meaning 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
- Wiktionary
- Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Gāo counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 22K | — |
| ES Spain | — | 1.9K | — |
| IN India | — | 984 | — |
| AR Argentina | — | 644 | — |
| FI Finland | — | 438 | — |
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 2020; INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)Gāo 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 Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin reading of 咍
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)- Gao Qib. 1336CNChinese writer and historian at the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty
- Charles K. Kaob. 1933GBnot in their usual nameHong Kong-British-American physicist
- Gao Xingjianb. 1940CNChinese novelist and playwright (1940- )
- Phillip Kob. 1949CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong film actor and director (1949-2017)
- Gao Zhishengb. 1964CNChinese human rights lawyer
- Gao Qunshub. 1966CNChinese film director
- Archie Kaob. 1969USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
- Gao Yuanyuanb. 1979CNChinese actress
- Godfrey Gaob. 1984TWTaiwanese-Canadian actor and model (1984-2019)
- Gao XianzhiTang Dynasty general (died 756)
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).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Gāo mean, and where does it come from?
- Chinese surname, from 高 (gāo). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 4 other sources.
- In which country does Gāo have the most bearers?
- Gāo is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Gāo?
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/g%C4%81oThe 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, “Gāo”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.