Berthold
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from the Germanic given name Berthold, from *berht- 'bright, famous' + *wald- 'rule'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/bɛʁthɔlt/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Berthold is a given name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in Germany.
- DEGermany
- USUnited States
- ATAustria
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from the Germanic given name Berthold, from *berht- 'bright, famous' + *wald- 'rule'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
- DEGermany
- USUnited States
- ESSpain
- ATAustria
- FRFrance
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Berthold 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 French, Germanic name from berht 'bright, famous' and wald 'rule'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In German, from Germanic *berht- 'bright, famous' + *wald- 'rule'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, Germanic *berht- 'bright' + *wald- 'rule'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, Germanic surname from the personal name Berhtold; plate shows consonant variation in the cluster (th/t, ch, b/p-like shifts). Bearer count: 3684.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
Germanic: ‘bright and splendid’, alteration of earlier Bertwald, ‘bright power’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
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)
- Bertholdb. 905Duke of Bavaria
- Berthold II, Duke of Carinthiab. 1000DEDuke of Carinthia and Margrave of Verona
- Berthold IV, Duke of Zähringenb. 1125DEDuke of Zähringen and Rector of Burgundy
- Berthold IV, Duke of Meraniab. 1153DEDuke of Merania and Margrave of Istria (1153–1204)
- Berthold V, Duke of Zähringenb. 1160DEDuke of Zähringen
- Bertolt Brechtb. 1898DEnot in their usual nameGerman poet, playwright, and theatre director (1898–1956)
- Berthold Lubetkinb. 1901GBRussian architect (1901–1990)
- Albert Speerb. 1905DEnot in their usual nameGerman Nazi architect, Government Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany and convicted Nazi War Criminal (1905–1981)
- Prince Berthold, Margrave of Badenb. 1906DEGerman prince (1906-1963)
- Ernst August, Prince of Hanoverb. 1954DEnot in their usual nameHanoverian prince; current head of the House of Hanover (born 1954)
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 58 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.8K | #15,037 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.6K | #17,752 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.3K | #20,731 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 323 | #3,735 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 303 | #4,313 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 259 | #2,459 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 173 | #41,955 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 142 | #48,466 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 127 | #6,998 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2003 | 120 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 75 | #3,742 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 73 | #2,404 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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
- What does the name Berthold mean, and where does it come from?
- from the Germanic given name Berthold, from *berht- 'bright, famous' + *wald- 'rule' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Berthold?
- A machine transcription gives /bɛʁthɔlt/ (IPA) for German.
- Is Berthold a male or female name?
- Berthold 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 Berthold?
- In the etymology graph, Bertil is a form of the same name in other languages; Bert is a recorded short or pet form.
- In which country does Berthold have the most bearers?
- Berthold is most frequently recorded in Germany.
What do you want to know about Berthold?
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/bertholdThe 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, “Berthold”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.