Gail - Meaning of Gail

What does Gail mean?

Pronounce
Gail

[ 1 syll. gai(l), ga-il ] The baby girl name Gail is also used as a boy name, though the use for girls is far more popular. It is pronounced as Gey-L †. Gail's language of origin is Hebrew and Middle English. It is predominantly used in English.

In addition, Gail is a shortening of the English, German, and Hebrew Abigail in the English language.

Gail is also a form of the English Gale.

The name Gail is widely used; it has 28 forms. Forms of the name include Gaela, Gaell, Gaelle, Gahl, Gaila, Gailine, Gaill, Gaille, Gal, Galia, Gayel, Gayelle, Gayla, Gayleen, Gaylene, Gaylia, Gaylin, Gayline, Gayll, Gaylla, Gaylle, Gaylyn, and Gaylynn. Other English forms include the familiar form Gay, and the spelling variants Gael, Gail, Gaile, Gale, and Gayle.

See also the related categories, english and hebrew.

Gail is an unusual baby girl name. Its usage peaked in 1951 with 0.535% of baby girls being named Gail. It was #36 in rank then. The baby name has steeply dropped in popularity since then, and is used only on an infrequent scale today. In 2018, among the family of girl names directly related to Gail, Abigail was the most regularly used. Although there were times from 1901 to 1928 that Gail was more popular with boys, today it is used more commonly as a baby girl name. In 1962, 70 times more baby girls than boys were given the name Gail.

Baby names that sound like Gail include Gael, Gaile, Gaill, Gaille, Gale, Gayl, Gayll, Gaylle, Gaal, Gaale, Gahl, Gal, Gayle, Gill, Glann, Glee, Glenne, Glie, Glo, and Gul.

† Pronunciation for Gail: G as in "grin (G.R.IH.N)" ; EY as in "ate (EY.T)" ; L as in "lay (L.EY)"