Gillian
Gillian reached its high-water mark in 1999 at number 303, and has been recorded 16,127 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 3,296th. About 16,000 Gillians are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 26.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Gillian boys named Gillian
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 16,127
- Estimated living today
- 16,000
- Median age today
- 26
- Peak year
- 1999
- Best rank
- 303rd
- Rank in 2025
- 3,296th
- First recorded
- 1922
- Girls / boys
- 16,059 / 68
How old the living Gillians are
born that year still alive today
Of the 16,127 babies given the name since 1922, about 16,000 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 2,200 of them are children and 290 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1999 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
Origin Latin
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Gillians
- Gillian Anderson (born 1968)American actress
- Gillian Flynn (born 1971)American author and critic
- Gillian Jacobs (born 1982)American film, theater and television actress
- Gillian Chung (born 1981)Hong Kong actress and singer
- Gillian Armstrong (born 1950)film director
- Gillian Vigman (born 1972)American actress
- Gillian Welch (born 1967)American musician
- Gillian Gilbert (born 1961)English musician, keyboardist, guitarist and singer
People named Gillian with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Gillian is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Gillian is most concentrated in Connecticut (2.3×), New Jersey (2.1×), Massachusetts (2.0×), Washington (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1999
The most popular girls’ names the year Gillian peaked:
Gillian elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scotland girls | Gillian | 8,717 | 5th |
| Ireland girls | Gillian | 5,687 | 28th |
| New Zealand girls | Gillian | 1,388 | 61st |
| France boys | Gillian | 625 | 699th |
| France girls | Gillian | 315 | 651st |
| Belgium boys | Gillian | 286 | 249th |
| England and Wales girls | Gillian | 262 | 703rd |
| Belgium girls | Gillian | 42 | 725th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Gillian | 28 | 172nd |
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.
Gillian: rank by region
In 2011, Gillian was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Gillian | 866 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Gillian 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.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Gillian | 11 | 21 |
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 Gillian lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 367 women called Gillian were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Gillian | 95 | 0.092 | 851 |
| Almería | Gillian | 30 | 0.080 | 939 |
| Málaga | Gillian | 65 | 0.071 | 912 |
| Balears, Illes | Gillian | 32 | 0.051 | 1,271 |
| Palmas, Las | Gillian | 25 | 0.042 | 1,926 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Gillian | 16 | 0.029 | 2,335 |
Listed in 10 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 42 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Gillian against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.