Gal
It splits close to even between women and men, around 450 people in all: one of the genuinely unisex names on the Polish register. Slavic at root and tied to the word for a wave, it stays rare enough that most Poles have never met one.
Gal Pronunciation
Gal is pronounced GAHL (/gal/).
What Gal means
Where Gal comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Gal comes into Polish records from Slavic soil, and its story runs along two channels. In Hebrew the same short word, גל, means a wave, and Israeli families give it to girls and boys alike; the actress Gal Gadot carries that reading and made it known well beyond Israel. This is the Jewish association most people meet first.
The Slavic side keeps its own temper. Here the name sits close to the sense that Polish lists render as kogut, a rooster, and with it the idea of someone zadziorny, quick to bristle and hard to push around. The offered short meaning is wave, yet the local color is that feisty bird.
Gal takes no diminutive and no separate feminine or masculine form. It stays as it is, three letters, one syllable. On a class register it would sit plainly between much longer names.
So the name holds a wave and a rooster in the same three letters.
How many people are named Gal
1 in 77906 men in Poland is named Gal. 452 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #1394 among male names.
Gal's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 boys were given the name in 2025. It has been stable for a decade.
Gal as a middle name
Gal is a first name for 452 men in Poland and a middle name for another 17, a 96/4 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1771st, between Friederike (17) and Hazal (17).
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#1769 Evelyne17
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#1770 Friederike17
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#1771 Gal17
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#1772 Hazal17
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#1773 Ivette17