Gangubai is from the Marathi name Ganga (the Ganges) and the bai honorific. Gangubai Hangal (1913-2009) was the Hindustani classical vocalist of the Kirana gharana — one of the most distinguished female musicians of 20th-century India. From a Devadasi family considered "untouchable," she rose to become a Padma Vibhushan recipient and a national treasure. Her deep, masculine-toned khayal singing redefined what a female voice could be in Indian classical music, breaking decades of expectation that women would sing in higher registers.
Featured on a 2014 Indian postage stamp.
Gangubai does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Gangubai reduce to 8, The Visionary. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.