Gilbert

108,832 people in America carry this name — ranked #284 of 777.

A surname with a trade, a place or a father behind it.

Say it GIHL burt

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

G IH1 L B ER0 T — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

People counted 108,832 2020 Census
Rank #284 Common
Per 100,000 36.4 about 1 in 3,046 people

Where Gilbert comes from and what it means

Teutonic in origin, reading literally as “bright pledge”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

A name and a surname

Gilbert is carried in front of the comma and behind it — thousands of Americans have it as a surname too.

The same name abroad

Gib English
Gibbon English
Gysbert Dutch
Gisbert German
Gileber French
Gilberto Italian
Giselbert German
Gisebryht Dutch

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

By sound First names that fit Gilbert Which names sit well before it, and which rhyme or double up — with the reason for each.

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Who answers to it now

White alone (non-Hispanic) — 75.1%
Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 15.7%
Hispanic or Latino origin — 3.8%
Two or more races — 4.0%
Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 0.7%
American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.7%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Surnames built the same way as Gilbert

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

How to spell Gilbert

Gilbert is how 54% of them spell it — 200,736 people answer to the sound.

Gilbert 54%
Gillespie 20%
Giles 20%
Gilchrist 6.0%

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Try it Name Matcher

Enter a surname and hear which first names sit well with it.

See the first names that fit this surname

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Where this page gets its numbers

Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Teutonic origin