Herve
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From Celtic, meaning “strong, ardent”
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɛʀv/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Herve is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country. In Cameroon it is the 17th most common given name.
- CMCameroon≈1 in 960(inferred from the name graph)
- FRFrance≈1 in 1.1K
- USUnited States1 in 268K
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.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 369 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 960 (inferred from the name graph)
≈63,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Cameroon, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Hervé in BJ Benin.
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 Celtic, meaning “strong, ardent”.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Herve 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #139 | ≈63,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 139K | Herve | 369 |
| CM Cameroon | #17 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 960 | — | Herve | 43 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | #115 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.3K | 4 | Herve | 30 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Herve | 25 |
| BJ Benin | #516 | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 7.6K | 1 | Hervé | 26 |
| US United States | — | 1,241 | 1 in 268K | 1.2K | Herve | 264 |
| GA Gabon | — | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 7.5K | 44 | — | 18 |
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; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; Ministere de l'Interieur — 2025 candidate lists (local + legislative); Assemblee Nationale du Benin — sitting-MP roster, 9eme legislature (2023-2028). 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)
Herve is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A Jersey name; see Harvey
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A Belgian cheese similar to Limburger.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Cebuano, a male given name from Breton
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, pilsēta Beļģijā ("Herve"), Valonijas reģiona Ljēžas provincē, 17200 iedzīvotāju (2013. g.)
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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.
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 51 sources across 29 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.2K | #10,639 |
| GA Gabon | Ministere de l'Interieur — 2025 candidate lists (local + legislative) | 2025 | 14 | #82 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2023 | 7 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 6 | #10,639 |
| BJ Benin | Assemblee Nationale du Benin — sitting-MP roster, 9eme legislature (2023-2028) | 2023 | 1 | #3 |
| FR France | Dictionnaire Généalogique des Prénoms (Athias, 2007) | — | — | — |
| FR France | Le Grand Guide des Prénoms | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Herve mean, and where does it come from?
- From Celtic, meaning “strong, ardent”. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- How do you pronounce Herve?
- A machine transcription gives /ɛʀv/ (IPA) for French.
- Is Herve a male or female name?
- Herve 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 Herve?
- In the etymology graph, Harve is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Herve have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 63 thousand people named Herve in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled herve.
- How common is the name Herve?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,241 people named Herve in 2020, about 1 in 268 thousand residents.
- How common is Herve compared with other names?
- In France, Herve is the 139th most common given name of 754,146 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Herve?
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/herveThe 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, “Herve” — the 139th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.