Giselle
Meaning
"pledge, hostage"
The story
Giselle comes from the Old German gisal, meaning a pledge or a hostage, a startling root with a tender history. In the early Middle Ages children were sometimes sent to foreign courts as living guarantees of a treaty, and such a child might be named for the promise she embodied. The name shed the danger and kept the sense of something precious given in trust. It became worldwide shorthand for grace through Adolphe Adam's 1841 ballet Giselle, still one of the great tragic roles in dance, and the model Gisele Bundchen carried the sound to a new generation. In the United States Giselle rose beautifully around the turn of the millennium and remains a firm favorite. Romantic, graceful and a little bittersweet at the root, it is a name that turns an old word for hostage into one for devotion.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Giselle peaked in the 2000s and the 2010s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
14,848 people · the #1,298 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 13,699 · median age 37
Among people named Giselle living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1980s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 83 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Giselle
Most people given the name Giselle in the United States are teenagers or young adults today.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Giselle deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Giselle truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Giselle fits with your family’s names and surname.
Keep exploring
Does Giselle fit YOUR family?
nametree reads your family’s names and finds the ones that belong. Free, private, no ads.
Add Giselle to your family’s tree →