Gilda is from the Old Germanic gold ("golden") — popularized as a feminine name in Italy through Verdi's Rigoletto (1851). A top-500 US baby name from 1907 to 1948. Gilda Radner (1946-1989) — *American comedian; original cast member of NBC's Saturday Night Live (1975-1980); first cast member ever hired for the show by Lorne Michaels; created iconic characters Roseanne Roseannadanna, Emily Litella, Lisa Loopner, and Baba Wawa; Emmy Award (1978). Married Gene Wilder (1984-1989); died of ovarian cancer at age 42; her memoir It's Always Something (1989) was a New York Times bestseller; founded Gilda's Club, a free cancer-support network — now part of the Cancer Support Community — with chapters in 50+ US cities. Gilda (1946) — Columbia Pictures film noir starring Rita Hayworth as Gilda Mundson Farrell — featuring the famous "Put the Blame on Mame" striptease scene; the film made Hayworth one of the most-photographed women of the 1940s, with her image appearing on the test atomic bomb dropped on Bikini Atoll (1946). Rigoletto (1851) — Verdi opera with Gilda the daughter of the court jester; the role is among the most-recorded soprano leads in opera. Gilda Lewis* — American documentary filmmaker.
Featured throughout 20th-century American comedy and Italian opera.
Gilda 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 Gilda reduce to 6, The Nurturer. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.