Gilles
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From Latin Aegidius, related to Greek aigis 'shield'
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 40 countries · latest register: INSEE, 2021
/ʒil/(recorded in a dictionary) French · from Wiktionary
Gilles is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country. In Luxembourg it is the 3rd most common given name.
- LULuxembourg≈1 in 510few records(inferred from the name graph)
- FRFrance≈1 in 640
- BEBelgium≈1 in 1.3K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 420 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 508 (inferred from the name graph)
≈110,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Luxembourg, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)From Latin Aegidius, related to Greek aigis 'shield'.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Gilles 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #112 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 642 | 176K | Gilles | 420 |
| CA Canada | #362 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | 5 | Gilles | 194 |
| CM Cameroon | #248 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Gilles | 39 |
| BE Belgium | #171 | ≈8,800 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | 2.9K | Gilles | 150 |
| CH Switzerland | #361 | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | 71 | Gilles | 95 |
| US United States | — | 1,353 | 1 in 246K | 4.1K | Gilles | 270 |
| LU Luxembourg | #3 | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 508 | — | Gilles | 72 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); the ca-statcan-baby-names register; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); 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).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Gilles is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, From Latin Aegidius, 'shield'; St Gilles.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In French, from the personal name Gilius, from Aegilius, a Late Latin variant ofAegidius (see Giles 1).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
From Latin Aegidus, Old French Gide. See {Giles in main dictionary.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In French, altération du nom anglais Gill, du vieux norrois gilli « serviteur »
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
In French, Du latin Aegidius, « protégé par l’égide » ; fêté le 1er septembre (saint Gilles).
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
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)- Gilesb. 640GRnot in their usual nameChristian hermit
- Gilles Binchoisb. 1400BEFranco-Flemish Renaissance composer (c. 1400–1460)
- Gilles de Raisb. 1405FRleader in the French army, companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc, convicted serial killer of children
- Georges Gilles de la Touretteb. 1857FRFrench physician (1857-1904)
- Marcel Minnaertb. 1893NLnot in their usual nameBelgian-Dutch astronomer (1893–1970)
- Gilles Deleuzeb. 1925FRFrench philosopher (1925–1995)
- Gilles Villeneuveb. 1950CACanadian racing driver (1950–1982)
- Gilles-Éric Séralinib. 1960FRFrench professor of molecular biology
- Gilles Lelloucheb. 1972FRFrench actor, film director and screenwriter
- Gilles Simonb. 1984FRFrench tennis player
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)71 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 40 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2021 | 176K | #2,593 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.3K | #10,016 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 1946 | 20 | #641 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 12 | #10,016 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2001 | 6 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2017 | 5 | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
- What does the name Gilles mean, and where does it come from?
- From Latin Aegidius, related to Greek aigis 'shield'. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- What are other forms of the name Gilles?
- In the etymology graph, Egidio, Egidijus and Tilen are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Gilles?
- In French /ʒil/ (Wiktionary).
- Is Gilles a male or female name?
- Gilles is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: France (INSEE, 2021), United States (Census Bureau, 2020), Finland (DVV) and Brazil (IBGE, 2022), among others.
- In which country does Gilles have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 106 thousand people named Gilles in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gilles.
- How common is the name Gilles?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,353 people named Gilles in 2020, about 1 in 246 thousand residents.
- How common is Gilles compared with other names?
- In France, Gilles is the 112th most common given name of 754,146 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gilles?
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/gillesThe 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, “Gilles” — the 112th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.