Gabel

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: A rent, service, tribute, custom, tax, impost, or duty; an excise (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 19 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020

/ˈɡeɪbəl/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary

Say it inExplore pronunciation →

Gabel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 7,177 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010. Gabel is also written กาเบล in Thai.

  • DEGermany≈1 in 19K(inferred from the name graph)
  • SGSingapore≈1 in 34Kfew records
  • USUnited States1 in 46K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Gabel itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

7,177 people, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Record sources
338 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 19K (inferred from the name graph)

Germany, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)Make your nomograph ✦

Gabel in other scripts: Thai

(measured from records)
GabelLatin(measured from records)
กาเบลGabel in Thai(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Gaebel in BS Bahamas.

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.

How to pronounce Gabel

  • English:/ˈɡeɪbəl/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
  • German:/ˈɡaːbɛl/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

from Gabel 'fork'; also from ONs, nickname, or short for Gegen/Gabriel

Cited for this meaning 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

How Gabel is read

(measured from records)

Gabel 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.

  • English69%

    A rent, service, tribute, custom, tax, impost, or duty; an excise.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • German8.4%

    from Gabel 'fork'; also from ONs, nickname, or short for Gegen/Gabriel

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

    fork

    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 the surname Gabel is found

(measured from records)

Gabel 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.

Where Gabel is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—7,1771 in 46K7.2KGabel338
DE Germany—≈4,300 est.≈1 in 19K—Gabel114
CA Canada—≈820 est.≈1 in 51K—Gabel76
FR France—≈770 est.≈1 in 89K92—4
GB United Kingdom—≈750 est.≈1 in 92K66Gabel59
SG Singapore—≈180 est.≈1 in 34K—Gabel3
DK Denmark—1161 in 51K116Gabel43
BS Bahamas#441≈18 est.≈1 in 23K—Gaebel1

7,177 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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 names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Gabel is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Canada, Belgium

    Also written Gäbel, Gabël

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Gäbel

  • Hindi surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: Hindi, Bangla, Urdu

    Also written Gäbël, Gäbel

  • Portuguese surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, United States, Portugal, United Kingdom

    Also written Gäbel

  • Polish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, Czechia, India

    Languages: Polish, Czech

    Also written Gäbel, Găbel

  • Greek surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States

    Also written Gäbel

42 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses

(measured from records)

Gabel 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.

  • metonymic occupational name for a maker and seller of forks, from Middle High German gabel(e), German Gabel ‘fork’. The reference is to any of the various pieces of agricultural equipment denoted by this word, for example hay forks, shearlegs, etc. Table forks were not used in Germany for eating before the 16th century.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • habitational name from any of the places called Gabel in Germany, in Schleswig, Thuringia, Silesia, and in particular one in Bohemia, which derive their name from Slavic jablo ‘apple tree’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • topographic name for someone who lived near a fork in a road or river, or owned a forked piece of land, from the German word in this transferred sense.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

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)
190019201940196019802000Martin Gabel, b. 1912Seth Gabel, b. 1981Elyes Gabel, b. 1983

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)
FormalDear Gabel,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

37 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 19 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the name Gabel come from?
from Gabel 'fork'; also from ONs, nickname, or short for Gegen/Gabriel Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
How do you pronounce Gabel?
It depends on the language: in English /ˈɡeɪbəl/ (Wiktionary); in German /ˈɡaːbɛl/ (Wiktionary).
What does the name Gabel mean?
In English, A rent, service, tribute, custom, tax, impost, or duty; an excise.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Gabel?
In the United States, the national register counted about 7.2 thousand people named Gabel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gabel. After it come Germany, Canada, France and United Kingdom; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Gabel?
In the United States, the national register counted 7,177 people named Gabel in 2010, about 1 in 46 thousand residents.
How common is Gabel compared with other names?
In the Bahamas, Gabel is the 441st most common surname of 3,175 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Gabel?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/gabel

The 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, “Gabel” — ranked 4775th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2010). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Gabel parses inside a full name →