Gisli
given name · Icelandic · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Gisli is a given name, with more bearers in Iceland than in any other country, where it is the 96th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Icelandic and English, written in the Latin script.
- ISIceland1 in 226◐
- NONorway1 in 196K
- DKDenmark1 in 210K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈1.6K ●
- Sources
- 58 ●
- 1 in 226 ◐
across 4 countries
302 records
Official registry-verified
Iceland
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Sources 1
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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IS Iceland | #96 | 1,549△ | 158 rec. | 1 in 226 | 1.5K | Gisli | 58 |
| NO Norway | — | 122 | 25 rec. | — | 92 | Gisli | 7 |
| US United States | — | 97 | 84 rec. | — | — | Gisli | 30 |
| SE Sweden | — | 34△ | 5 rec. | 1 in 300K | 34 | Gisli | 4 |
| DK Denmark | — | 28 | 15 rec. | 1 in 210K | 28 | Gisli | 21 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 13 | 3 rec. | — | — | Gisli | 7 |
| GH Ghana | — | 6 | 6 rec. | — | — | Gisli | 3 |
| PL Poland | — | 2 | — | 1 in 19M | 2 | — | — |
| FI Finland | — | — | — | — | 20 | — | — |
| FO Faroe Islands | — | — | 0 rec. | — | 1 | — | 1 |
| CL Chile | — | — | — | — | 1 | — | — |
| EC Ecuador | — | — | — | — | 1 | — | — |
Roughly 1.5K people in Iceland bear this name (about 1 in 226). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Icelandic5.3K89%
- English1653%
- Danish1503%
- Norwegian Bokmål922%
- German471%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Icelandic | 5,282 | 89% |
| English | 165 | 3% |
| Danish | 150 | 3% |
| Norwegian Bokmål | 92 | 2% |
| German | 47 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1999 | 16 |
| 2000 | 17 |
| 2001 | 17 |
| 2002 | 15 |
| 2003 | 17 |
| 2004 | 20 |
| 2005 | 20 |
| 2006 | 18 |
| 2007 | 19 |
| 2008 | 20 |
| 2009 | 24 |
| 2010 | 23 |
| 2011 | 25 |
| 2012 | 25 |
| 2013 | 22 |
| 2014 | 24 |
| 2015 | 26 |
| 2016 | 25 |
| 2017 | 26 |
| 2018 | 25 |
| 2019 | 25 |
| 2020 | 25 |
SE SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) — 22 years between 1999–2020. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Gísli Oddssonb. 1593ISIcelandic theologian
- Gísli Brynjúlfssonb. 1827ISIcelandic writer (1827–1888)
- Gísli Halldórssonb. 1927ISactor (1927-1998)
- Gísli Guðjónssonb. 1947ISIcelandic psychologist
- Gísli Snær Erlingssonb. 1964ISIcelandic film director
- Gísli Marteinn Baldurssonb. 1972ISIcelandic television host and politician
- Gísli Örn Garðarssonb. 1973ISIcelandic film producer and author
- Gísli Eyjólfssonb. 1994ISIcelandic association football player
- Gísli Þorgeir Kristjánssonb. 1999ISIcelandic handball player
- Gísli Þórðarsonb. 2004ISIcelandic footballer (born 2004)
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 11 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 92 | #8,064 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 34 | #17,533 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 28 | #3,518 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2017 | 26 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2015 | 26 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 25 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2019 | 25 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2018 | 25 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2016 | 25 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2012 | 25 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2011 | 25 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2014 | 24 | — |
Reference works 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 36 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Gisli?
- We estimate roughly 1.6 thousand people bear Gisli (counting its spellings and scripts) across 4 countries in our records.
- In which country does Gisli have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 1.5 thousand people bear Gisli in Iceland, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled gisli.
- Where is Gisli most common?
- Gisli is densest in Iceland, where the national register counts about 1 in 226 people carrying it.
- How common is Gisli compared with other names?
- In Iceland, Gisli is the 96th most common given name of 4,856 given names recorded there.
- Is Gisli a male or female name?
- Gisli is a male 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.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/gisliThe 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, “Gisli” — the 96th most common given name in Iceland. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.