Gabriela
From Hebrew, carrying the sense "God is my strength". Around 136,000 Polish women answer to it, and the count of newborns has held steady, so it stays among the names you'll almost surely recognize.
Gabriela Pronunciation
Gabriela is pronounced gahbr-YE-lah (/gabrˈjɛla/).
What Gabriela means
Where Gabriela comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Gabriela grows from the Hebrew Gavri'el, which pairs gever, a word for man and for strength, with El, one of the old names of God. The reading passed down is "god is my strength." The masculine Gabriel belonged to the archangel who brings word to Daniel and later to Mary, and Gabriela is the feminine cut from that root.
In Poland the name spread only in the nineteenth century, and it lives now in its shorter shapes. Gabrysia is the everyday one. On a school register the full Gabriela stands in one column while the teacher calls out Gabrysia. The variant Gabrielle travels through French and English, the same name in another coat.
The name makes a plain claim: the strength named in it belongs to God rather than to the woman who answers to it. Those who carry it keep their imieniny most often on the nineteenth of December, and again on the twenty-fourth of March beside Gabriel. The Hebrew root still reads the same, god is my strength.
When Gabriela celebrates name day
Gabriela appears 5 times in the Polish name day calendar, never as a main name. The first of these dates is 8 February.
Rarer dates. Only the most complete calendars add this name on these days. Most skip them, so hardly anyone celebrates then.
How many people are named Gabriela
1 in 166 women in Poland is named Gabriela. 135,956 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #104 among female names.
Gabriela's popularity over time
1,745 girls were given the name in 2025, ranking #47 among newborns. It has been falling steadily since 2000.
Where Gabriela is most popular
Gabriela is most popular in Greater Poland, 58% above the national average (2,411 girls born 2019–2025), followed by Podlaskie (+41%) and Masovian (+23%). It is least common in Silesian and Opole, 61% and 58% below average respectively.
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Greater Poland2,411 girls born+58%
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Podlaskie657 girls born+41%
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Masovian3,086 girls born+23%
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Świętokrzyskie459 girls born+17%
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Warmian-Masurian584 girls born+15%
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian885 girls born+14%
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Lublin789 girls born+9%
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Lesser Poland1,730 girls born+8%
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Lubusz346 girls born−1%
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West Pomeranian557 girls born−7%
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Łódź774 girls born−14%
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Subcarpathian696 girls born−18%
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Lower Silesian854 girls born−23%
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Pomeranian687 girls born−34%
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Opole137 girls born−58%
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Silesian630 girls born−61%
Gabriela as a middle name
Gabriela is a first name for 135,956 women in Poland and a middle name for another 43,767, a 76/24 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 53rd, between Zuzanna (45,292) and Stefania (42,168).
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#51 Dominika48,283
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#52 Zuzanna45,292
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#53 Gabriela43,767
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#54 Stefania42,168
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#55 Marzena41,980