Bernhard
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in German: from Germanic *bern- 'bear' + *hard- 'hard, strong'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/bɛɐnɐt/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bernhard is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 83rd most common given name.
- ATAustria≈1 in 326(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 388
- CHSwitzerland≈1 in 1.3K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 269 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 326 (inferred from the name graph)
≈210,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From the German, Dutch and Scandinavian forms of the Germanic male personal name Bernhard, literally ‘bear-brave’ or ‘bear-strong’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
How Bernhard is read(measured from records)
Bernhard is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- German88%
from Germanic *bern- 'bear' + *hard- 'hard, strong'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
a male given name from Old High German, equivalent to English Bernard.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Zum Rufnamen Bernhard (‘Bär’ + ‘hart’/‚stark, kühn‘); umfasst Kurz- und Nebenformen wie Bernd, Bernt, Berendt, Benno usw.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
aus germ. Bern-hard, 'Bär' + 'stark/kühn'; zeigt dentale Plosiv-Varianten -d/-t/-th/-dt, mit Belegen in vielen Regionen.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
- English5.7%
From the German, Dutch and Scandinavian forms of the Germanic male personal name Bernhard, literally ‘bear-brave’ or ‘bear-strong’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bernhard 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #83 | ≈210,000 est. | ≈1 in 388 | — | Bernhard | 269 |
| AT Austria | #42 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 326 | 10K | Bernhard | 176 |
| CN China | — | ≈8,400 est. | ≈1 in 166K | — | Bernhard | 19 |
| CH Switzerland | #85 | ≈6,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | 2.2K | Bernhard | 117 |
| SE Sweden | — | 4,545 | 1 in 2.2K | 4.5K | — | 50 |
| FI Finland | — | 1,357 | 1 in 4.1K | 4.9K | — | 19 |
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: Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); 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)
Bernhard is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, German form of Bernard; Germanic ‘bear’ + ‘strong, hardy’.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
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)
- Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltkeb. 1800DEGerman Field Marshal (1800–1891)
- Bernhard Riemannb. 1826DEGerman mathematician (1826–1866)
- Alfred Nobelb. 1833SEnot in their usual nameSwedish chemist and inventor (1833–1896)
- Bernhard von Bülowb. 1849DEGerman and Prussian politician (1849–1929)
- Bernhard Rustb. 1883DEGerman Holocaust perpetrator (1883-1945)
- Ernst Buschb. 1885DEnot in their usual nameGerman field marshal (1885-1945)
- Bernhard zur Lippe-Biesterfeldb. 1911NLhusband of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands (1911-2004); prince consort of the Netherlands (1911-2004)
- Bernhard Wickib. 1919ATAustrian actor and film director (1919–2000)
- Bernhard Schlinkb. 1944DEGerman writer
- Johan Friso van Oranje-Nassau van Amsbergb. 1968NLnot in their usual namesecond son of Beatrix of the Netherlands and Claus von Amsberg; brother of King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands (1968-2013)
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)
Attested in 81 sources across 33 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 10K | #326 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 4.9K | #308 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 4.5K | #649 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 1.4K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 422 | — |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present) | 2024 | 16 | #333 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 10 | #38,094 |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Bernhard come from?
- From the German, Dutch and Scandinavian forms of the Germanic male personal name Bernhard, literally ‘bear-brave’ or ‘bear-strong’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Bernhard?
- A machine transcription gives /bɛɐnɐt/ (IPA) for German.
- What does the name Bernhard mean?
- In German, from Germanic *bern- 'bear' + *hard- 'hard, strong'
- Is Bernhard a male or female name?
- Bernhard 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.
- What are other forms of the name Bernhard?
- In the etymology graph, Bernard, Bernardo and Dino are forms of the same name in other languages; Ben, Bernd and Bernt are recorded short or pet forms.
- In which country does Bernhard have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 206 thousand people named Bernhard in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bernhard.
- How common is the name Bernhard?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 4,545 people named Bernhard, about 1 in 2.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Bernhard compared with other names?
- In Germany, Bernhard is the 83rd most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bernhard?
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/bernhardThe 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, “Bernhard” — the 83rd most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.