Hildegard
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in German: a female given name from the West Germanic languages used since Middle Ages, best known for the 12th-century saint Hildegard of Bingen
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/çɪldəɡat/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Hildegard is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 977(inferred from the name graph)
- ATAustria≈1 in 3.4K
- USUnited States1 in 135K
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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 168 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 977 (inferred from the name graph)
≈82,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Germany, 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)
Germanic: ‘battle protector’. Hildegund(e) 2 Germanic: ‘battle strife’. Holger $ Nordic: from earlier Holmger ‘island spear’.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Hildegard is read(measured from records)
Hildegard is one spelling over 2 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.
- German70%
a female given name from the West Germanic languages used since Middle Ages, best known for the 12th-century saint Hildegard of Bingen
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English20%
A battle stronghold.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Hildegard, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hildegard 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #230 | ≈82,000 est. | ≈1 in 977 | 2 | Hildegard | 164 |
| AT Austria | #422 | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | 83 | Hildegard | 82 |
| US United States | — | 2,460 | 1 in 135K | 2.5K | Hildegard | 168 |
| SE Sweden | — | 1,717 | 1 in 5.9K | 1.7K | — | 13 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 1,593 | 1 in 11K | 1.5K | Hildegard | 23 |
| CH Switzerland | — | ≈490 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Hildegard | 35 |
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: the de-duesseldorf-vornamen register; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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)
Hildegard 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.
Germanic: ‘battle protector’. Hildegund(e) 2 Germanic: ‘battle strife’. Holger $ Nordic: from earlier Holmger ‘island spear’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
German, Scandinavian, and English: from an old Germanic female personal name composed of the elements hild battle + gard enclosure. It was borne by the second wife of Charlemagne and by the mystical writer Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179).
as a word
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)
- Hildegardb. 828abbess of Fraumünster, daughter of Louis the German
- Edwin Linkomiesb. 1894FInot in their usual nameFinnish politician, rector and Prime Minister of Finland (1894-1963)
- Hilde Schraderb. 1910DEnot in their usual nameswimmer (1910–1966)
- Hildegard Hamm-Brücherb. 1921DEGerman politician (1921-2016)
- Hildegard Knefb. 1925DEGerman actress, singer and writer (1925-2002)
- Hilda Múdrab. 1926ATnot in their usual nameSlovak figure skater (1926–2021)
- Hildegard Behrensb. 1937DEGerman operatic soprano (1937-2009)
- Hildegard Falckb. 1949DEGerman middle distance runner
- Hildegard Schroedterb. 1958DEGerman actress
- Annika Jankellb. 1961SEnot in their usual nameSwedish television host and journalist
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 54 sources across 26 countries.
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- Where does the name Hildegard come from?
- Germanic: ‘battle protector’. Hildegund(e) 2 Germanic: ‘battle strife’. Holger $ Nordic: from earlier Holmger ‘island spear’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- What are other forms of the name Hildegard?
- In the etymology graph, Hilda, Matilda and Hildegarde are forms of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Hildegard mean?
- In German, a female given name from the West Germanic languages used since Middle Ages, best known for the 12th-century saint Hildegard of Bingen
- Is Hildegard a male or female name?
- Hildegard is a female 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 do you pronounce Hildegard?
- A machine transcription gives /çɪldəɡat/ (IPA) for German.
- In which country does Hildegard have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 82 thousand people named Hildegard in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hildegard.
- How common is the name Hildegard?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,460 people named Hildegard in 2020, about 1 in 135 thousand residents.
- How common is Hildegard compared with other names?
- In Germany, Hildegard is the 230th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Hildegard?
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/hildegardThe 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, “Hildegard” — the 230th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.