Gisela
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in German: from a Germanic stem gisal- 'pledge, hostage'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/çisela/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gisela is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country.
- ARArgentina≈1 in 797(inferred from the name graph)
- VEVenezuela1 in 2.2K
- DODominican Republic≈1 in 3K
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.
- Argentina (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 311 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 797 (inferred from the name graph)
≈57,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Argentina, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
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)
From Germanic gisil, 'pledge, hostage'; feminine name.
Sources 1
- Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Gisela is read(measured from records)
Gisela is one spelling over 3 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.
- Spanish67%
Germánico: hipocorístico de un nombre con gisl/gisil/gisel/gisal 'lanza'.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
- German18%
from a Germanic stem gisal- 'pledge, hostage'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
a female given name, equivalent to English Giselle
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English7.3%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Gisela in English.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Gisela 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | #191 | ≈57,000 est. | ≈1 in 797 | 21 | Gisela | 148 |
| VE Venezuela | #212 | 12,819 | 1 in 2.2K | 13K | Gisela | 51 |
| US United States | — | 12,810 | 1 in 26K | 13K | Gisela | 311 |
| PE Peru | #512 | ≈9,900 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | — | Gisela | 68 |
| ES Spain | #422 | 9,531 | 1 in 5.2K | 9.5K | Gisela | 142 |
| DO Dominican Republic | #160 | ≈3,500 est. | ≈1 in 3K | — | Gisela | 24 |
| PT Portugal | #279 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | listed | Gisela | 89 |
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: RENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present); asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); the pt-irn-lista-nomes register. 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)
Gisela is also recorded in 3 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 Germanic gisil, 'pledge, hostage'; feminine name.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Germanic: ‘pledge’ or ‘scion’, = French Giselle (see main dictionary).
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Portuguese, a female given name from the Germanic languages, equivalent to English Giselle
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)
- Gisela, Abbess of Chellesb. 757FRRoman Catholic nun and abbess
- Gisela of Hungaryb. 985DEGerman princess, Hungarian queen consort and Roman Catholic blessed
- Archduchess Gisela of Austriab. 1856ATAustrian Imperial and Royal
- Archduchess Elisabeth Marie of Austriab. 1883ATnot in their usual nameArchduchess of Austria (1883-1963)
- Brigitte Helmb. 1906DEnot in their usual nameGerman actress (1908–1996)
- Gisela Mauermayerb. 1913DEGerman discus thrower (1913–1995)
- Princess Angela, Princess Maximilian of Liechtensteinb. 1958PAnot in their usual namePanamanian-American fashion designer and member of the Liechtenstein royal family
- Michelleb. 1972DEnot in their usual nameGerman schlager singer
- Giselab. 1979ESSpanish singer and actress
- Gisela Dulkob. 1985ARArgentine 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)
Attested in 73 sources across 40 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VE Venezuela | asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996) | — | 13K | #144 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 13K | #2,098 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 9.5K | #562 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 9.2K | #291 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 37 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 22 | #2,098 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present) | 2024 | 21 | #1,537 |
| AR Argentina | datos.gob.ar — nombres.datos.gob.ar per-name lookup (1922–2015) | 2015 | 14 | — |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — births 1922–2015 (Kaggle mirror) | 2015 | 14 | — |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Lista de Nomes Próprios admitidos | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Gisela come from?
- From Germanic gisil, 'pledge, hostage'; feminine name. Recorded by Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms.
- In which country does Gisela have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 57 thousand people named Gisela in Argentina, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gisela.
- How do you pronounce Gisela?
- A machine transcription gives /çisela/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Gisela mean?
- In German, from a Germanic stem gisal- 'pledge, hostage'
- What are other forms of the name Gisela?
- In the etymology graph, Giselle, Ghislaine and Gisella are forms of the same name in other languages; Gisa is a recorded short or pet form.
- Is Gisela a male or female name?
- Gisela is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- How common is the name Gisela?
- In Venezuela, the national register counted 12,819 people named Gisela, about 1 in 2.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Gisela compared with other names?
- In Argentina, Gisela is the 191st most common given name of 119,825 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gisela?
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/giselaThe 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, “Gisela” — the 191st most common given name in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.