Harald
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Germanic: from earlier Harwald ‘army power’ (A concise dictionary of first names)
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 37 countries · latest register: SSB PxWebApi, 2025
/ˈhaʁalt/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Harald is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Austria it is the 48th most common given name. Harald is also written Харальд in Cyrillic.
- ATAustria≈1 in 300(inferred from the name graph)
- NONorway1 in 448
- DEGermany≈1 in 460
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Harald itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 269 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 296 (inferred from the name graph)
186,450 named Harold, 2020
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Harald in other scripts: Cyrillic
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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.
How to pronounce Harald
- German:/ˈhaʁalt/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Germanic: from earlier Harwald ‘army power’. See }Harold in main dictionary.
Cited for this meaning 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Harald, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Harald 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 | — | 186,450as Harold | 1 in 1.8K | 186K | Harald | 232 |
| DE Germany | #92 | ≈180,000 est. | ≈1 in 456 | — | Harald | 269 |
| AT Austria | #48 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 296 | 2.9K | Harald | 177 |
| SE Sweden | — | 13,752 | 1 in 742 | 14K | Harald | 59 |
| NO Norway | #346 | 12,204 | 1 in 448 | 41K | Harald | 76 |
186,450 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling harold. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Harald is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Norwegian Nynorsk, a male given name from Old Norse, feminine equivalent Haralda or Haralde
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, a male given name from the North Germanic languages
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, männl. Vom., dänische, norwegische, schwedische Entsprechung von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In English, A different form of Harrod (i–ii).
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In non, accusative of Haraldr
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Harald III of Norwayb. 1015NOKing of Norway from 1046 to 1066
- Harold Harefootb. 1016GBnot in their usual nameKing of England from 1035 to 1040
- Harold IIb. 1022GBnot in their usual nameAnglo-Saxon King of England in 1066
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)69 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 37 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Harald come from?
- Germanic: from earlier Harwald ‘army power’. See }Harold in main dictionary. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Harald a male or female name?
- Harald is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: Norway (SSB), Finland (DVV), Austria (Statistik Austria, 2024) and Netherlands (Meertens NVB), among others.
- What are other forms of the name Harald?
- In the etymology graph, Harold, Harry and Hal are forms of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Harald mean?
- Recorded meaning: Germanic: from earlier Harwald ‘army power’.
- How do you pronounce Harald?
- In German /ˈhaʁalt/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people named Harald?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 186 thousand people named Harold, more than in any other country we hold. After it come Germany, Austria, Sweden and Norway; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Harald?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 13,752 people named Harald, about 1 in 742 residents.
- How common is Harald compared with other names?
- In Austria, Harald is the 48th most common given name of 26,800 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Harald?
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/haraldThe 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, “Harald” — ranked 298th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2020). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.