Gabriel
A surname taken from the given name Gabriel, the biblical archangel's name, sometimes also used as a nickname.
The #1,327 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 11,617 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Gabriel comes from the biblical personal name Gabriel, via Latin and Anglo-Norman into English surname use. The name is usually understood to mean something like "God is my strength" or "mighty man of God" in Hebrew. As a surname, it most often began as a patronymic from a man named Gabriel, though some early writers also treated it as a nickname from the given name itself.
History
The surname appears in medieval and later records as people began using inherited family names formed from personal names. It is found in England in several historical registers, but the surname also has long use in other Christian and Jewish naming traditions across Europe. In older English surname scholarship, Gabriel was sometimes grouped with names borrowed from angelic or biblical names rather than from occupations or places.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Because Gabriel is both a saintly-biblical given name and an inherited surname, it can be hard to tell from old records whether it began as a family name or simply as a baptized personal name in a particular document.
From the historical record
“Gabriel. GABRIEL. A personal name borrowed from the celestial hierarchy, GABY. In many dialects a silly fellow. More probably a nick-name of Gabriel. GAD. GADD. A-Sax. gad, a goad or spear. Halliwell quotes from an old MS. : " And hys axes .ilso smeten, With gaddes of stele that made them to hetjii."”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom