Hérald
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Hérald is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English herald, herauld, heraud, from Anglo-Norman heraud, from Old French heraut, hiraut (modern French héraut), from Frankish *heriwald, from Proto-Germanic *harjawaldaz, a compound cons.
- USUnited States1 in 78K(measured from records)
- INIndia1 in 41M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 81 (measured from records)
- 1 in 78K (inferred from the name graph)
4,289 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Herald in US United States, FR France, CI Côte d’Ivoire and Heral'D in LV Latvia.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- Middle Englishherald(measured from records)
- Anglo-Normanheraud(measured from records)
- Old Frenchherautmodern French héraut(measured from records)
- Frankish*heriwald(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*harjawaldaz(measured from records)
From Middle English herald, herauld, heraud, from Anglo-Norman heraud, from Old French heraut, hiraut (modern French héraut), from Frankish *heriwald, from Proto-Germanic *harjawaldaz, a compound consisting of Proto-Indo-European *ker- (“army”) + *h₂welh₁- (“to be strong”). Compare Walter, which has these elements reversed.
Sources 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
- Nordic Names
Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hérald counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 4,289 | 1 in 78K | 4.3K | Herald | 29 |
| IN India | 32 | 1 in 41M | 32 | — | 1 |
| FR France | — | — | — | Herald | 81 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | — | — | Herald | 1 |
| LV Latvia | — | — | — | Heral'D | 3 |
| NL Netherlands | — | — | 229 | — | 5 |
4,289 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Hérald mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English herald, herauld, heraud, from Anglo-Norman heraud, from Old French heraut, hiraut (modern French héraut), from Frankish *heriwald, from Proto-Germanic *harjawaldaz, a compound cons… Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 2 other sources.
- Is Hérald a male or female name?
- Hérald is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Hérald have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 4.3 thousand people named Hérald, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled herald.
- Where is Hérald most common?
- Hérald is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 78 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Hérald?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,289 people named Hérald in 2010, about 1 in 78 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Hérald?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/h%C3%A9raldThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Hérald”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.