Gest
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 1. topographic name for someone who lived in one of the areas of geest (sandy soil) in northwestern Germany
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈdʒɛst/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gest is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 148K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 472K
- BEBelgium1 in 2.9M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 186 (measured from records)
- 1 in 148K (inferred from the name graph)
704 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
1. topographic name for someone who lived in one of the areas of geest (sandy soil) in northwestern Germany. 2. habitational name from any of several places so named in the Lower Rhine region.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gest 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 | 704 | 1 in 472K | 750 | Gest | 41 |
| NL Netherlands | 117 | 1 in 148K | 117 | — | 2 |
| IN India | 34 | 1 in 39M | 34 | — | — |
| BR Brazil | 20 | 1 in 11M | 20 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 4 | 1 in 2.9M | 4 | Gest | 4 |
704 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 2020; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population 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)
Gest 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, A story or adventure; a verse or prose romance.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In enm, A guest, visitor; somebody staying at another's residence.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Icelandic, indefinite accusative singular of gestur
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Polish, gesture (motion of the limbs or body)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In non, accusative/dative singular of gestr
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)
- Joseph Henry Gestb. 1559USAmerican museum director
- Joseph Gestb. 1776USAmerican surveyor (1776–1863)
- Clarissa Gestb. 1815US(1815-1901)
- Joseph John Gestb. 1830US(1830-1917)
- William H. Gestb. 1838USAmerican politician (1838-1912)
- Morris Gestb. 1875USAmerican theatre producer (1875-1942)
- Margaret Gestb. 1900USAmerican painter (1900-1965)
- Alain Gestb. 1950FRFrench politician
- David Gestb. 1953USAmerican producer and entertainer
- Ben Gestb. 1975GBAmerican photographer (born 1975)
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 15 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 750 | #32,794 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 736 | #30,061 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 704 | #32,632 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 117 | #16,743 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 34 | #56,753 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 20 | #194,891 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 4 | #108,312 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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)
- 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
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 Gest come from?
- 1. topographic name for someone who lived in one of the areas of geest (sandy soil) in northwestern Germany. 2. habitational name from any of several places so named in the Lower Rhine region. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What are other forms of the name Gest?
- In the etymology graph, Yeast is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Gest?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈdʒɛst/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Gest mean?
- Recorded meaning: 1. topographic name for someone who lived in one of the areas of geest (sandy soil) in northwestern Germany.
- In which country does Gest have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 704 people named Gest, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gest.
- Where is Gest most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Gest is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 148 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Gest?
- In the United States, the national register counted 704 people named Gest in 2010, about 1 in 472 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Gest?
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/gestThe 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, “Gest”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.