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Gisel vs Giselle

American parents have registered 50,230 Giselles since 1880, against 2,283 Gisels. Giselle is still ahead, with 803 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Gisel against Giselle, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Gisel Giselle

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Giselle has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1949 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1978, when Gisel had 18 and Giselle had 95.

Side by side

  Gisel Giselle
Total US births 2,28350,230
Most in one year 1142,596
Babies in 2025 17803
Estimated living today 2,30050,000
Median age today 2217
Peak year 19992007
Best rank 1,502nd girls134th girls
Rank in 2025 6,546th382nd
First recorded 19691949
Girls / boys 2,283 / 050,186 / 44

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Gisels alive today are over 22; half the Giselles are over 17. That is 5 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Gisel Giselle
France 107,115

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Gisel and Giselle.