Gamble

surname · Latin script

Meaning: From the medieval personal name Gamall, of Old Norse origin, meaning literally 'old'

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/ɡæmbəl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Gamble is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 8.1K(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 9.1K
  • USUnited States1 in 9.8K

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 Gamble 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.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈160,000 people, est.

#757 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
462 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 6.2K (inferred from the name graph)

Iceland, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

KambleLatin(measured from records)
แกมเบิ้ลThai(measured from records)

Locally spelled Kamble in IN India.

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 the medieval personal name Gamall, of Old Norse origin, meaning literally 'old'.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Gamble 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 Gamble is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈160,000 est.≈1 in 8.8K—Gamble9
US United States#88834,0051 in 9.8K34KGamble462
GB United Kingdom#761≈8,200 est.≈1 in 8.1KlistedGamble219
IT Italy—≈3,700 est.≈1 in 17K—Gamble13
CA Canada#967≈3,700 est.≈1 in 10K—Gamble174
AU Australia#858≈2,800 est.≈1 in 9.1K—Gamble186
IN India#1742,102as Kamble1 in 631K2.1KKamble219
NZ New Zealand#778≈540 est.≈1 in 9K—Gamble72
IS Iceland—≈56 est.≈1 in 6.2K—Gamble4

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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Gamble is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Gâmble

59 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)

Gamble 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 English, which, surprisingly enough, was occasionally used in N England during the Middle Ages as a given name. Vars.: Gambell, Gammell, Gammil; Gemmell, Gemmill (Scots). Dims.: Gam(b)lin(g), Gamlen, Gamlane. called from OE gafol tribute + tun enclosure, settlement, denoting an estate held by the payment of rent rather than by feudal gift.

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

  • In English, from the Old Norse byname Gamall meaning ‘old’, which was occasionally used in North England during the Middle Ages as a personal name.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, A bet or wager.

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

  • In English, Altered spelling of German Gambel.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • Viejo

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

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)

18001850190019502000James Gamble, b. 1803John Rankin Gamble, b. 1848Robert J. Gamble, b. 1851Clarence Gamble, b. 1881David Gamble, b. 1955Kevin Gamble, b. 1965Sera Gamble, b. 1983Mason Gamble, b. 1986Seth Gamble, b. 1987Nathan Gamble, b. 1998

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 Gamble,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 33 sources across 19 countries.

Official registers attesting Gamble
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201034K#1,024
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200032K#981
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202032K#1,069
GB United KingdomA Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988)———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

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 Gamble mean, and where does it come from?
From the medieval personal name Gamall, of Old Norse origin, meaning literally 'old'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Gamble?
A machine transcription gives /ɡæmbəl/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Gamble have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 159 thousand people named Gamble in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gamble.
How common is the name Gamble?
In the United States, the national register counted 34,005 people named Gamble in 2010, about 1 in 9.8 thousand residents.
How common is Gamble compared with other names?
In India, Gamble is the 174th most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Gamble?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Gamble” — the 174th most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Gamble parses inside a full name →