Ferdinand
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: from a Spanish personal name of Germanic origin, probably ‘brave journey’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Ferdinand is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 1.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- ATAustria≈1 in 2.4K
- DEGermany≈1 in 2.6K
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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 338 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈73,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Philippines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from a Spanish personal name of Germanic origin, probably ‘brave journey’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Ferdinand is read(measured from records)
Ferdinand is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- English43%
from a Spanish personal name of Germanic origin, probably ‘brave journey’
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Germanic name meaning ‘journey risk’; used in Ireland to anglicise Farry, Fardoragh, Fergananym, and Fergus.
as a nameIrish first names
prepared for the journey; adventurer or traveller.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- German18%
Spanish given name, originally West Gothic; perhaps from Herinand or Fredenand
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
- Spanish11%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Ferdinand in Spanish.
- French9.3%
From Germanic fardi ‘journey’ + nand ‘bold’
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Ferdinand 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | #379 | ≈73,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Ferdinand | 139 |
| DE Germany | #405 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Ferdinand | 209 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Ferdinand | 67 |
| US United States | — | 6,930 | 1 in 48K | 6.9K | Ferdinand | 338 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈6,000 est. | ≈1 in 9.4K | — | Ferdinand | 34 |
| AT Austria | #264 | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | 2.3K | Ferdinand | 110 |
| AL Albania | — | 788 | 1 in 3.9K | 788 | — | 1 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 496 | 1 in 4.2K | 496 | — | 3 |
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; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts); SURS — resident population given names. 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)
Ferdinand 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.
$ Traditional name among the Habsburgs, of Visigothic (Spanish) origin: see main dictionary.
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)
- Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperorb. 1503ESemperador del SIR de 1556 a 1564
- Ferdinand IIb. 1578ATHoly Roman Emperor
- Ferdinand IIIb. 1608ATEmperor of the Holy Roman Empire (1608-1657)
- Ferdinand Ib. 1793ATAustrian emperor, king of Hungary and Bohemia (1793-1875)
- Ferdinand Fochb. 1851FRFrench marchal and military theorist (1851–1929)
- Ferdinand de Saussureb. 1857CHSwiss linguist and philosopher (1857–1913)
- Ferdinand E. E. Marcosb. 1917PHPresident of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbarb. 1947USnot in their usual nameAmerican basketball player (born 1947)
- William Alexander of the Netherlandsb. 1967NLnot in their usual nameKing of the Netherlands (born 1967)
- Rafael van der Vaartb. 1983NLnot in their usual nameDutch association football player (born 1983)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 116 sources across 61 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 6.9K | #3,146 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 2.3K | #58 |
| AL Albania | INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts) | — | 788 | #629 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2025 | 496 | #300 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 473 | #619 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present) | 2024 | 155 | #58 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 25 | #3,146 |
Reference works 9
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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
- Kotík, Antonín, Naše příjmení (nové vydání, 1897)
- 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
- What does the name Ferdinand mean, and where does it come from?
- from a Spanish personal name of Germanic origin, probably ‘brave journey’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Ferdinand a male or female name?
- Ferdinand 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 Ferdinand have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 73 thousand people named Ferdinand in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ferdinand.
- What are other forms of the name Ferdinand?
- In the etymology graph, Fernando, Fernand and Nando are forms of the same name in other languages; Ferdi, Ferdy and Ferdie are recorded short or pet forms.
- How common is the name Ferdinand?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,930 people named Ferdinand in 2020, about 1 in 48 thousand residents.
- How common is Ferdinand compared with other names?
- In the Philippines, Ferdinand is the 379th most common given name of 486,299 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ferdinand?
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/ferdinandThe 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, “Ferdinand” — the 379th most common given name in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.