Gift
given name · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Gift is a given name, most frequently recorded in Nigeria. In Malawi it is the 44th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Swahili, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: possibly from the vocabulary word gift used as a personal name, in the sense ‘gift of God’, with reference to a child.
- NGNigeria1 in 2.8K◐
- ZASouth Africa1 in 4.1K
- USUnited States1 in 1M
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈589 ●
- Sources
- 200 ●
- 1 in 117K ◐
across 8 countries
58K records
Official registry-verified
Iceland
Meaning & origin●
possibly from the vocabulary word gift used as a personal name, in the sense ‘gift of God’, with reference to a child. Compare Theodore. However, the name is most common in Cornwall and may be of Cornish origin.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #277 | 26,441 | 34K rec. | — | — | Gift | 90 |
| ZA South Africa | #441 | 8,185 | 8.9K rec. | — | 2.6K | Gift | 65 |
| ZM Zambia | #269 | 956 | 86 rec. | — | 41 | Gift | 31 |
| MW Malawi | #44 | 726 | 55 rec. | — | listed | Gift | 25 |
| PH Philippines | — | 706 | 551 rec. | — | — | Gift | 29 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | 556 | 289 rec. | — | — | Gift | 27 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 451 | 831 rec. | — | 4 | Gift | 64 |
| US United States | — | 332 | 10K rec. | 1 in 1M | 1.5K | Gift | 200 |
| AU Australia | — | 330 | 352 rec. | — | — | Gift | 45 |
| KE Kenya | — | 249 | 45 rec. | — | — | Gift | 18 |
| ES Spain | — | 130△ | 50 rec. | 1 in 385K | 130 | — | 19 |
| DE Germany | — | 127 | 261 rec. | — | 1 | Gift | 44 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English39K43%
- Swahili37K42%
- Bulgarian1.5K2%
- English (South Africa)1.5K2%
- Spanish1.4K2%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 38,669 | 43% |
| Swahili | 37,111 | 42% |
| Bulgarian | 1,523 | 2% |
| English (South Africa) | 1,458 | 2% |
| Spanish | 1,400 | 2% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Gift 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, unexplained. Apparently an unflattering nickname meaning ‘poison’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Something given to another voluntarily, without charge.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, A girl from the farm.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, mboya hani, boya hani
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In German, poison
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1999 | 5 |
| 2004 | 8 |
| 2005 | 8 |
| 2007 | 9 |
| 2008 | 5 |
| 2009 | 7 |
| 2010 | 7 |
| 2011 | 9 |
| 2012 | 8 |
| 2015 | 11 |
| 2016 | 5 |
| 2017 | 13 |
| 2018 | 14 |
| 2019 | 11 |
| 2020 | 6 |
| 2021 | 9 |
| 2022 | 10 |
| 2023 | 11 |
| 2024 | 14 |
| 2025 | 11 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 20 years between 1999–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Gift Muzadzib. 1974ZWZimbabwean footballer
- Gift Kampambab. 1979ZMZambian footballer (born 1979)
- Gift Leremib. 1984ZAAssociation footballer (1984-2007)
- Gift Otuweb. 1984NGNigerian footballer
- Gift Atulewab. 1986NGfootballer
- Gift Ngoepeb. 1990ZASouth African professional baseball player
- Gift Motupab. 1994ZASouth African association football player
- Gift Linksb. 1998ZAfootball player
- Gift Mondayb. 2001NGNigerian association football player
- Gift Orbanb. 2002NGNigerian footballer (born 2002)
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).
Evidence●
Attested in 41 sources across 24 countries.
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 2026-09-12 data build · 106 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Gift?
- We estimate roughly 589 people bear Gift (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
- In which country does Gift have the most bearers?
- Gift is most frequently recorded in Nigeria, where it is most often spelled gift.
- How common is Gift compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Gift is the 277th most common given name of 146,224 given names recorded there.
- Is Gift a male or female name?
- Gift is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- What does the name Gift mean?
- Recorded meaning: possibly from the vocabulary word gift used as a personal name, in the sense ‘gift of God’, with reference to a child.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/giftThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Gift” — the 277th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.