Giselle
Feminine · Germanic roots · “pledge”
Giselle is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 50,186 girls against 44 boys since 1880.
Giselle has been carried by European royalty since the early Middle Ages, and in 1841 it became the title of a Paris ballet that has never left the repertoire. The sound is two beats and a soft landing — a hushed opening consonant, then the stress falling on that bright final syllable. Few names manage to be both medieval and unmistakably French.
How old is the name Giselle?
Giselle first appears in US birth records in 1949 — 76 years ago. The typical Giselle alive today was born around 2008, making them about 17 years old. About 49,500 people named Giselle are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Giselle most popular?
Giselle peaked in 2007, reaching #134 nationally. Today it ranks #382, 248 places below that high. See the whole 2007 chart.
Giselle appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From gisil (Germanic element) to Giselle
The story of Giselle
The name begins as a Germanic element, gisil, and surfaces across the Frankish world in the Carolingian era: Gisela was borne by a daughter of Charlemagne, and later by Gisela of Bavaria, wife of Stephen I and the first queen of Hungary. From Latinized Gisela, French produced Gisèle, and the doubled-l Giselle followed. Its modern fame owes much to the ballet Giselle, premiered in Paris in 1841 with music by Adolphe Adam and a libretto by Théophile Gautier, drawn from a passage in Heinrich Heine. In the United States the name arrived in the mid-twentieth century and grew slowly, reaching its widest use in the early 2000s before easing back.
Meaning
pledge, hostage
The root is the Germanic element gisil. In early medieval treaty-making, a noble child sent to another court as a living guarantee of peace was such a pledge — the word carried the weight of an oath kept, not a captive taken.
How the name formed
- gisilGermanic element
- Gisela
- Gisèle
- Giselle
Related forms: Gisèle · Gisela · Gisella · Gizella · Gisele · Gisela
Pronouncing Giselle
ji-ZEL
Two syllables in American English, stress on the second. Some families use the French-leaning zhee-ZEL, with the soft zh of "measure". Either is correct; it helps to pick one early.
Nicknames for Giselle
High
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1949
- Most girls named
- 20072,596 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #134reached in 2007
- Change vs 2023
- −9.7%803 in 2025, from 889
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Giselle in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Gisèle in French — same name
- Gisela in German — same name
- Gisella in Italian — same name
- Gizella in Hungarian — same name
- Gisele in Portuguese — spelling variant
- Gisela in Spanish — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Giselles among us
people named Giselle are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 2,002 born in 2025 was named Giselle
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Giselle
- #382
- Giselle on the 2025 chart
- #344
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Giselle went to 803 girls in 2025, but Gisele and Gizelle are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 888, which makes it the 344th most-given girls’ name of the year — 38 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 1,810 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 2,002 for Giselle itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Miriam test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Giselle's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Miriam climbed just as high around 1917, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Miriam's path sketches the road Giselle is walking now.
Giselle sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Giselle is headed
Giselle should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Giselle beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Giselle in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Recognized across French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Hungarian, each with its own settled form.
- A documented record stretching back to the Carolingian courts of early medieval Europe.
- Ready-made short forms — Gigi and Elle — that both work independently.
- The 1841 ballet keeps the spelling and pronunciation familiar well beyond the name's own frequency.
- The spelling competes with Gisele, Gisela, Gizelle and Gissell, so expect to confirm it fairly often, especially over the phone.
- Two accepted pronunciations circulate, ji-ZEL and the French-flavored zhee-ZEL. Neither is wrong, but you will hear both from teachers and receptionists.
- The literal meaning, "pledge" or "hostage", surprises some people. The medieval sense was closer to a promise made good, but it is worth knowing before someone tells you.
- It reached its widest use fairly recently, so it currently reads as belonging to teenagers and young adults more than to babies — a familiar name that is nonetheless unlikely to be doubled in a classroom.
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What they receive
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Giselle
Feminine · Germanic roots · #382 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Giselles are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 49,500 people named Giselle are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Giselle?
- Giselle is the most-used spelling in US records — 803 of the 888 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Gisele and Gizelle.
- How popular is the name Giselle in 2025?
- Giselle ranks #382 among US girl names in 2025, with 803 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Giselle?
- About 1 in every 2,002 US girls born in 2025 was named Giselle — 803 in all.
- Will my child share the name Giselle with classmates?
- Giselle will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Giselle
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Nicole#382 · Demi#380 · Blaire#384 · Amari#380 · Laura#379 · Liana#385 · Kira#385 · Ivory#378
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Giselle? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Giselle and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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