Gillian

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Gillian is a given name, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Feminine form of Julian; of uncertain meaning.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 884◐
  • AUAustralia1 in 1.8K
  • NZNew Zealand1 in 2.4K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈80K ●

across 9 countries

4 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
445 ●

704K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 2.8K ◐

Guyana

Spellings & scripts●

JillianLatin · English●398K records
ג'יליאןHebrew · Hebrew●714 records
ДжиллианCyrillic · Russian●25 records
জিলিয়ানBengali · Bangla●1 records

Locally spelled Jillian in US United States, CA Canada, PH Philippines and 6 more and ג'יליאן in IL Israel.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

Feminine form of Julian; of uncertain meaning. Used in Ireland in modern times.

Sources 1

  • Irish first names

Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Gillian is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom#148233,907175K rec.—5Gillian244
US United States#72778,578415K rec.1 in 4.2K79KJillian445
AU Australia#30965,07854K rec.—90Gillian190
CA Canada#44825,37816K rec.—10Jillian184
PH Philippines—8,8814.4K rec.—522Jillian87
ZA South Africa#5716,4656.1K rec.——Gillian92
NZ New Zealand#1723,5372.2K rec.—16Gillian93
IE Ireland#2583,3063K rec.——Gillian117
ID Indonesia—850602 rec.—listedJillian42
IT Italy—8151.3K rec.—1Jillian31
IL Israel—6701.1K rec.—118ג'יליאן26
RU Russia—594971 rec.——Jillian21

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English373K81%
  • Spanish16K3%
  • French11K2%
  • Portuguese7.9K2%
  • German4.7K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English372,71081%
Spanish15,6793%
French10,5552%
Portuguese7,8952%
German4,6771%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Gillian is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name42K records spelled Gillian13 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Gíllian, Gïllïãń, Gillián, Gïllïån, Gilliän

  • a separate given name6.4K records spelled Gillian2 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Gill-Ian

56 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●

Gillian 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, colloquial pronunciation of Julian or more commonly Juliana; first attested Giliana 1198 FF (Sf).

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, From Roman family name; feminine form of Julian, a derivative of Julia.

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • In French, English form of Gillian/Julian; from Latin Iulianus.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

  • In English, Irish (Tyrone and Derry); reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Gileain ‘son of Giledn\ a variant of the personal name Gealdn, from a diminutive of geal ‘bright’, ‘white’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • A feminine form of Julian, name of uncertain meaning. It is used in Ireland in modern times.

    as a nameIrish first 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.

Over time●

05001K1.5K194019601980200020201K · 1999

Show as table
Gillian in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1922–2025
Yearrecords
19225
19376
19386
19407
19419
19427
194310
19447
194513
194611
194722
194819
194923
195018
195119
195216
195319
195416
195529
195626
195731
195825
195935
196019
196151
196265
196361
196470
196582
196683
196784
1968116
1969127
1970125
1971121
1972128
1973139
1974110
1975100
197695
1977162
1978175
1979174
1980173
1981222
1982255
1983227
1984255
1985234
1986209
1987265
1988281
1989263
1990238
1991208
1992197
1993176
1994162
1995221
1996379
1997659
1998890
19991,022
2000976
2001863
2002761
2003638
2004513
2005420
2006362
2007366
2008339
2009251
2010211
2011188
2012166
2013120
2014125
2015120
2016105
201781
201888
201959
202052
202151
202252
202351
202452
202547

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 89 years between 1922–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

19201940196019802000Gillian Lynne, b. 1926Gillian Rose, b. 1947Gillian Armstrong, b. 1950Gillian Anderson, b. 1968Gillian Keegan, b. 1968Gillian Flynn, b. 1971Gillian Vigman, b. 1972Gillian Chung, b. 1981Gillian Jacobs, b. 1982Gillian Zinser, b. 1985

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 72 sources across 41 countries.

Official registers attesting Gillian
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202019K#1,627
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.4K#11,917
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.1K#14,274
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.4K#18,787
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2011545#2,452
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—396#2,496
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—367#5,680
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—285#4,464
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 20252025264#339
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022250—
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—204#5,410
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020194#1,627

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name 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 2026-09-12 data build · 583 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Gillian?
We estimate roughly 80 thousand people bear Gillian (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Gillian have the most bearers?
Gillian is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled gillian.
How common is Gillian compared with other names?
In the United Kingdom, Gillian is the 148th most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.
Is Gillian a male or female name?
Gillian is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Gillian mean?
Recorded meaning: Feminine form of Julian; of uncertain meaning.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/gillian

The 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

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

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, “Gillian” — the 148th most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Gillian parses inside a full name →