Gorse
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Either a topographic name for someone living by gorse, or from a place-name in northern France
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/gɔʁz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gorse is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 53K(inferred from the name graph)
- SISlovenia1 in 3.4K
- HRCroatia1 in 101K
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.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 174 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.4K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,300 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Slovenia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Either a topographic name for someone living by gorse, or from a place-name in northern France.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gorse 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 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 53K | 126 | Gorse | 174 |
| SI Slovenia | 616 | 1 in 3.4K | 616 | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 241K | — | Gorse | 6 |
| US United States | 269 | 1 in 1.2M | 309 | Gorse | 24 |
| CA Canada | ≈48 est. | ≈1 in 783K | — | Gorse | 9 |
| HR Croatia | 42 | 1 in 101K | 42 | — | — |
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 noms de famille (1891–2000); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form). 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)
Gorse 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.
topographic name from a derivative of gora ‘mountain’, ‘hill planted with vines’, ‘wood in a hill country’ (see Gornik).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
topographic name from Old English gors(t) ‘gorse’, or a habitational name from some minor place named with this word.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, An evergreen shrub, of the genus Ulex, having thorns, spiny leaves, and yellow flowers.
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)
- Pierre Gorseb. 1816FRGorse (Lithographer)
- Pierre-François Gorseb. 1945FRFrench painter (1945-2011)
- Krissb. 1948FRnot in their usual nameFrench radio producer and actor (1948–2009)
- Roland Gorseb. 1948FRrugby league footballer
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 18 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 309 | #60,887 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 269 | #72,332 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 255 | #80,289 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 255 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 243 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 235 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 219 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 217 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 171 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 165 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 162 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 155 | — |
Reference works 6
- 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 surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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 Gorse mean, and where does it come from?
- Either a topographic name for someone living by gorse, or from a place-name in northern France. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Gorse?
- A machine transcription gives /gɔʁz/ (IPA) for French.
- In which country does Gorse have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.3 thousand people named Gorse in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gorse.
- Where is Gorse most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Gorse is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 3.4 thousand people — even though France holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Gorse?
- In Slovenia, the national register counted 616 people named Gorse, about 1 in 3.4 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Gorse?
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/gorseThe 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, “Gorse”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.