Gael

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Gael boys named Gael

Girls and boys called Gael

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Gael crossed from girls to boys in 2001, and has stayed there for 25 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% boys, which is roughly where it still is.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 29 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births

49,752

Estimated living today

49,000

Median age today

7

Peak year

2024

Best rank

89th

Rank in 2025

86th

First recorded

1919

Girls / boys

673 / 49,079

How old the living Gaels are

born that year still alive today

Of the 49,752 babies given the name since 1919, about 49,000 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 44,000 of them are children and 290 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2018 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Borrowed from Irish Gael, alt. Old English wāþ)..

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Gaels

• Gael García Bernal (born 1978)Mexican actor and producer
• Gaël Clichy (born 1985)French footballer and manager
• Gaël Monfils (born 1986)French tennis player
• Gaël Kakuta (born 1991)French-Congolese footballer
• Gaël Givet (born 1981)French footballer
• Gaël Bigirimana (born 1993)Burundian footballer
• Gaël Ondoua (born 1995)Cameroonian association football player
• Gaël Faye (born 1982)burundi-rwandan-french singer and writer

People named Gael with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Gael is most common

• TX12,387
• CA12,033
• IL2,506
• NY2,174
• AZ1,993
• FL1,891
• GA1,329
• NJ1,184
• NC1,179
• CO1,044

Relative to how many babies each state records, Gael is most concentrated in Nevada (4.3×), Arizona (3.3×), Texas (3.3×), California (2.5×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2024

The most popular boys’ names the year Gael peaked:

• Liam
• Noah
• Oliver
• Theodore
• James
• Henry

All the names of 2024

Gael elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Gael: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Gael is most concentrated in Jura, where 0.20% of children were given it – 29 of them.

Gael: rank by region

In 2025, Gael was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.

In 2024, Gael was among the 10 most common names in 2 regions of Spain.

In 2024, Gael was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2021, Gael was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Gael appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (265th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Gael by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Gael among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Gael lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 14,949 men called Gael were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Gaetano
• Gaetana
• Gae
• Gaelle

Gael against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Gael vs Gaetano
• Gael vs Gaetana
• Gael vs Gae
• Gael vs Gaelle

Compare Gael with a name of your own