Gaú
surname · Latin script
Gaú is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Two main origins: * Borrowed from German Gau, a habitational surname. * A variant of Gao, a surname of Chinese origin.
- UYUruguay1 in 7.4K(measured from records)
- ARArgentina1 in 216K
- USUnited States1 in 243K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 204 (measured from records)
- 1 in 7.4K (inferred from the name graph)
1,367 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Gau in US United States, ES Spain.
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)
Two main origins: * Borrowed from German Gau, a habitational surname. * A variant of Gao, a surname of Chinese origin.
Sources 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wiktionary
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gaú 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 1,367 | 1 in 243K | 1.4K | Gau | 78 |
| UY Uruguay | 460 | 1 in 7.4K | 460 | — | — |
| AR Argentina | 211 | 1 in 216K | 211 | — | — |
| BR Brazil | 150 | 1 in 1.4M | 150 | — | — |
| ES Spain | 43 | 1 in 1.2M | 43 | Gau | 4 |
| CH Switzerland | 15 | 1 in 560K | 15 | — | 2 |
1,367 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Gaú mean, and where does it come from?
- Two main origins: * Borrowed from German Gau, a habitational surname. * A variant of Gao, a surname of Chinese origin. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Wiktionary.
- In which country does Gaú have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.4 thousand people named Gaú, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gau.
- Where is Gaú most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Gaú is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 7.4 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Gaú?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,367 people named Gaú in 2010, about 1 in 243 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Gaú?
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/ga%C3%BAThe 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, “Gaú”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.