Gold bonding wires for semiconductor devices featuring increased strength and modulus of elasticity, stable loop shapes, suppressing the flow of wires, suppressing the leaning, and totally improved junctions of the wedge junction portions or wear characteristics for realizing a narrow-pitch connection, and enhanced the productivity on an industrial scale, and a method of producing the same. A gold bonding wire for a semiconductor device has a crystal grain structure in cross section in the lengthwise direction of the bonding wire, wherein a ratio of the area of crystal grains having an orientation [111] to the area of crystal grains having an orientation [100] is not smaller than 1.2 in the crystal orientations in the lengthwise direction of the wire.