Gerald
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Gerald is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Austria it is the 58th most common given name. Recorded meaning: from Old French/Old Germanic Gerald/Girald, meaning 'spear-ruler'; first attested Robertus filius Geraldi 1086 DB.
- ATAustria≈1 in 376(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 664
- CACanada≈1 in 743
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #322 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 585 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 376 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,800,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
from Old French/Old Germanic Gerald/Girald, meaning 'spear-ruler'; first attested Robertus filius Geraldi 1086 DB
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gerald 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈1,800,000 est. | ≈1 in 754 | — | Gerald | 47 |
| US United States | #141 | 258,431 | 1 in 1.3K | 258K | Gerald | 585 |
| PH Philippines | #147 | ≈92,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 52K | Gerald | 162 |
| GB United Kingdom | #186 | ≈71,000 est. | ≈1 in 926 | listed | Gerald | 293 |
| DE Germany | #300 | ≈54,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Gerald | 217 |
| CA Canada | #123 | ≈51,000 est. | ≈1 in 743 | 2 | Gerald | 243 |
| AT Austria | #58 | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 376 | 3.5K | Gerald | 173 |
| IE Ireland | #99 | ≈7,800 est. | ≈1 in 664 | — | Gerald | 99 |
| SG Singapore | #70 | ≈7,800 est. | ≈1 in 800 | — | Gerald | 133 |
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; Top 500 First Names in the Philippines (PSA FOI response, tracking; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024). 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)
Gerald 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 Irish, Germanic ‘spear rule’; introduced after the Norman Invasion.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, from Germanic name meaning 'rule' + 'spear'
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
from the personal name Gerald, Gerald, composed of the Germanic elements geri, gdri ‘spear’ + wald ‘rule’; it was introduced to Britain from France by the Normans.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A male given name from the Germanic languages.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, different form of Garrett (ii).
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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)
- Gerald Fordb. 1913USpresident of the United States from 1974 to 1977 (1913–2006)
- Gerald Durrellb. 1925GBBritish naturalist and writer (1925–1995)
- Ronald Wayneb. 1934USnot in their usual nameAmerican engineer and co-founder of Apple Inc.
- Stephen Breyerb. 1938USnot in their usual nameUS Supreme Court justice from 1994 to 2022
- Jerry Brownb. 1938USnot in their usual nameGovernor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019 (born 1938)
- Jerry Springerb. 1944USnot in their usual nameAmerican television personality and politician (1944–2023)
- Gerald McRaneyb. 1947USAmerican actor
- Ty Burrellb. 1967USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor and comedian
- Jerry Trainorb. 1977USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor (born 1977)
- G-Eazyb. 1989USnot in their usual nameAmerican rapper
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 103 sources across 55 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 258K | #207 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 3.5K | #713 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 598 | #207 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 168 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 16 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1993 | 10 | — |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present) | 2024 | 5 | #766 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 2 | #1,520 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- 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
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 Gerald mean, and where does it come from?
- from Old French/Old Germanic Gerald/Girald, meaning 'spear-ruler'; first attested Robertus filius Geraldi 1086 DB Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- Is Gerald a male or female name?
- Gerald 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 Gerald?
- In the etymology graph, Geraldo, Jerald and Jerrold are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Gerald have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.8 million people named Gerald in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gerald.
- How common is the name Gerald?
- In the United States, the national register counted 258,431 people named Gerald in 2020, about 1 in 1.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Gerald compared with other names?
- In Austria, Gerald is the 58th most common given name of 26,800 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gerald?
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/geraldThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Gerald” — the 58th most common given name in Austria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.