Guy

given name · French · Latin script

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

Guy is a given name, most frequently recorded in France, where it is the 74th most common given name. It appears chiefly in French and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Either from the personal name Guy, from Germanic Wido of uncertain origin, or from Old French gui ‘guide’.

rarermore common
  • MQMartinique1 in 269◐
  • GPGuadeloupe1 in 287
  • FRFrance1 in 417

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

≈57K ●

across 8 countries

Sources
396 ●

458K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 6.2K ◐

United States

Meaning & origin●

Derivation of Guy: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Guy
  1. Germanic Widoof●
  2. Old Frenchgui●

Either from the personal name Guy, from Germanic Wido of uncertain origin, or from Old French gui ‘guide’.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Guy is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FR France#741,266,051331K rec.—266KGuy367
US United States—54,00360K rec.1 in 6.2K54KGuy396
CA Canada#44925,30025K rec.—1Guy167
BE Belgium#6717,51719K rec.—28Guy141
GB United Kingdom—5,9964K rec.——Guy137
IL Israel—3,6793.1K rec.——Guy109
CM Cameroon#152,8942.8K rec.——Guy43
MQ Martinique#262,41378 rec.—5Guy19
GP Guadeloupe#202,15766 rec.—5Guy21
CI Côte d’Ivoire#4011,5841.7K rec.——Guy37
SE Sweden—928△83 rec.1 in 11K928—26
VN Vietnam—876486 rec.——Guy41

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

Languages●

  • French1.4M56%
  • English863K35%
  • Spanish40K2%
  • Portuguese14K1%
  • German13K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
French1,372,65256%
English862,84335%
Spanish39,5232%
Portuguese14,4941%
German13,1381%

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◐

Guy is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name1.3M records spelled Guy34 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Guey, Güy, Gūÿ, Gùÿ, Gûy

  • a separate given name25K records spelled Guy4 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Ģuy, Güy

  • Arabic given name10K records spelled Guy3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Egypt, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia

    Languages: Arabic, Maltese

  • Hebrew given name8.2K records spelled Guy10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Israel, United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand

    Also written גיא, גאי, גיי, Gay, Gai

  • Polish given name6.2K records spelled Guy2 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Ğüy

103 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●

Guy 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 French, French form of Gui, from Germanic Wido/Wido, of uncertain origin; often linked to “wood”.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In French, From Germanic Wido, possibly related to 'wood' or 'wide'.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In French, From Germanic Wido, possibly 'wood' or 'wide'; St Guy.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

  • In English, from OFr Guy, OG Wido, a common French name, usually latinized as Wido, sometimes Guido; first attested Willelmus filius Widonis, Guidonis 1086 DB

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • occupational name for a guide. Old French gui (a derivative of gui(d)er ‘to guide’, of Germanic origin).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family 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●

01K2K3K1900195020002.3K · 1957

Show as table
Guy in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
1880239
1881186
1882253
1883224
1884260
1885266
1886255
1887238
1888297
1889271
1890249
1891262
1892315
1893267
1894261
1895261
1896262
1897195
1898215
1899200
1900240
1901170
1902186
1903187
1904175
1905203
1906168
1907189
1908200
1909195
1910250
1911243
1912455
1913566
1914580
1915816
1916903
1917904
1918999
1919908
1920957
19211,120
19221,116
19231,043
19241,055
1925978
1926994
1927921
1928866
1929822
1930827
1931781
1932757
1933790
1934767
1935768
1936711
1937732
1938719
1939712
1940716
1941760
1942799
1943823
1944783
1945759
1946976
19471,184
19481,023
19491,131
19501,237
19511,400
19521,843
19531,885
19542,099
19552,041
19562,216
19572,302
19582,104
19592,031
19601,949
19612,023
19621,916
19631,742
19641,607
19651,359
19661,278
19671,167
19681,144
19691,171
19701,009
1971865
1972726
1973627
1974593
1975531
1976507
1977497
1978435
1979464
1980417
1981405
1982422
1983342
1984343
1985367
1986344
1987354
1988327
1989314
1990323
1991332
1992282
1993260
1994202
1995208
1996193
1997188
1998208
1999190
2000201
2001209
2002173
2003173
2004168
2005152
2006186
2007159
2008163
2009146
2010158
2011141
2012142
2013149
2014156
2015155
2016140
2017157
2018139
2019172
2020130
2021118
2022127
2023111
2024112
2025103

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 146 years between 1880–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

100012001400160018002000Callixtus II, b. 1065Clement IV, b. 1190Guy Fawkes, b. 1570Guy de Maupassant, b. 1850Guy Verhofstadt, b. 1953Christopher Lambert, b. 1957Guy Parmelin, b. 1959Bryan Adams, b. 1959Guy Pearce, b. 1967Adam Riess, b. 1969

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 101 sources across 59 countries.

Official registers attesting Guy
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2020266K#2,548
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202054K#849
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202030K#1,133
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201029K#1,227
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200028K#1,150
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—1.2K#1,341
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19911.2K—
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—949#2,144
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—928#1,784
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)2026755#563
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—673#576
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—550—

Reference works 8

  • 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
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • 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 2026-09-12 data build · 1,121 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Guy?
We estimate roughly 57 thousand people bear Guy (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
In which country does Guy have the most bearers?
Guy is most frequently recorded in France, where it is most often spelled guy.
How common is Guy compared with other names?
In France, Guy is the 74th most common given name of 711,207 given names recorded there.
Is Guy a male or female name?
Guy 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.
What does the name Guy mean?
Recorded meaning: Either from the personal name Guy, from Germanic Wido of uncertain origin, or from Old French gui ‘guide’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/guy

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, “Guy” — the 74th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Guy parses inside a full name →