Gauche
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in French: left
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɡoʃ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gauche is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 2.4M(measured from records)
- BEBelgium1 in 902K
- BRBrazil1 in 1.8M
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 78 (measured from records)
- 1 in 902K (inferred from the name graph)
136 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Belgium
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from OFr gauche ‘left-handed, awkward’; first attested John Gauch 1260 AssC
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
How Gauche is read(measured from records)
Gauche is one spelling over 2 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.
- French66%
left
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English20%
from OFr gauche ‘left-handed, awkward’; first attested John Gauch 1260 AssC
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Awkward or lacking in social graces; bumbling.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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 in the world(measured from records)
Gauche 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 | 136 | 1 in 2.4M | 141 | Gauche | 78 |
| BR Brazil | 117 | 1 in 1.8M | 117 | Gauche | 2 |
| ES Spain | 14 | 1 in 3.6M | 14 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 13 | 1 in 902K | 13 | Gauche | 8 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 31M | — | Gauche | 9 |
136 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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)
Gauche 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 Latvian, Kreisais
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)
- Dany Daubersonb. 1925FRnot in their usual nameFrench singer (1925–1979)
- Bernadette Gauchéb. 1949FRFrench 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)
Attested in 11 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 141 | #114,852 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 140 | #127,742 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 136 | #126,018 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 117 | #56,228 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 14 | #101,339 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 13 | #61,474 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Gauche come from?
- from OFr gauche ‘left-handed, awkward’; first attested John Gauch 1260 AssC Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Gauche?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡoʃ/ (IPA) for French.
- What does the name Gauche mean?
- In French, left
- What are other forms of the name Gauche?
- In the etymology graph, Walk is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Gauche have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 136 people named Gauche, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gauche.
- Where is Gauche most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Gauche is densest in Belgium — about 1 in 902 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Gauche?
- In the United States, the national register counted 136 people named Gauche in 2010, about 1 in 2.4 million residents.
What do you want to know about Gauche?
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/gaucheThe 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, “Gauche”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.