Gerard
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: from Old French/Old Germanic Gerard/Girard, meaning 'spear-brave'; first attested Gerardus, Girardus 1086 DB
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dʒɛɹad/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gerard is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In France it is the 73rd most common given name.
- FRFrance≈1 in 643(inferred from the name graph)
- ESSpain1 in 2.3K
- BEBelgium≈1 in 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 386 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 643 (inferred from the name graph)
≈180,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Old French/Old Germanic Gerard/Girard, meaning 'spear-brave'; first attested Gerardus, Girardus 1086 DB
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
How Gerard is read(measured from records)
Gerard is one spelling over 3 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.
- English47%
from Old French/Old Germanic Gerard/Girard, meaning 'spear-brave'; first attested Gerardus, Girardus 1086 DB
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
from Germanic name meaning 'spear' + 'hard'
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
A male given name from the Germanic languages.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French37%
Nom germanique: ger- « lance » + hard- « dur, fort »; saint Gérard, fêté le 3 octobre.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
- Spanish5.0%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Gerard in Spanish.
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)
Gerard 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 | — | ≈180,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.5K | — | Gerard | 18 |
| FR France | #73 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 643 | 379K | Gerard | 367 |
| US United States | — | 41,777 | 1 in 8K | 42K | Gerard | 386 |
| ES Spain | #319 | 22,069 | 1 in 2.3K | 22K | Gerard | 166 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 3K | — | Gerard | 139 |
| CM Cameroon | #195 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Gerard | 26 |
| IE Ireland | #514 | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 27 | Gerard | 69 |
| BE Belgium | #459 | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 3K | 6.2K | Gerard | 117 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present). 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)
Gerard is also recorded in 2 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 hard’; introduced by the Normans, linked with St Gerard Majella.
as a nameIrish first names
from the personal name Gerard, Gerard, introduced to Britain from France by the Normans; it is composed of the Germanic elements gar, ger ‘spear’, ‘lance’ + hard ‘hardy’, ‘brave’, ‘strong’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family 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)
- Roland Barthesb. 1915FRnot in their usual nameFrench philosopher and essayist
- Gérard Debreub. 1921FRFrench economist and mathematician (1921–2004)
- Gérard Mouroub. 1944FRFrench physicist, winner of Nobel Prize in Physics 2018
- François Hollandeb. 1954FRnot in their usual namePresident of France from 2012 to 2017 (born 1954)
- Mel Gibsonb. 1956USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor, director, producer and screenwriter (born 1956)
- Alexandre Desplatb. 1961FRnot in their usual nameFrench film composer (born 1961)
- Gerard Butlerb. 1969GBScottish actor and film producer
- Gerard Wayb. 1977USAmerican singer (born 1977)
- Gerard Piquéb. 1987ESSpanish association football player (born 1987)
- Martin Garrixb. 1996NLnot in their usual nameDutch DJ and record producer
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 113 sources across 57 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 42K | #1,019 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 22K | #326 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 22K | #144 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 95 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 57 | #1,019 |
| IE Ireland | CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) | 2017 | 27 | #210 |
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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Gerard mean, and where does it come from?
- from Old French/Old Germanic Gerard/Girard, meaning 'spear-brave'; first attested Gerardus, Girardus 1086 DB Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- What are other forms of the name Gerard?
- In the etymology graph, Jerry, Gerardo and Gerhard are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Gerard?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒɛɹad/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Gerard have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 185 thousand people named Gerard in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gerard.
- Is Gerard a male or female name?
- Gerard 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.
- How common is the name Gerard?
- In the United States, the national register counted 41,777 people named Gerard in 2020, about 1 in 8.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Gerard compared with other names?
- In France, Gerard is the 73rd most common given name of 754,146 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gerard?
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/gerardThe 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, “Gerard” — the 73rd most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.