Richard
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Richard is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 9th most common given name. Recorded meaning: From the male personal name Richard, of Germanic origin, literally ‘power-brave’.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 105(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 108
- IEIreland≈1 in 120
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Richard itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #25 (measured from records)
- 8 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 702 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 105 (inferred from the name graph)
1,575,998 people, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Ricardo in BR Brazil, PT Portugal.
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 the male personal name Richard, of Germanic origin, literally ‘power-brave’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Richard 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #9 | 1,575,998 | 1 in 211 | 1.6M | Richard | 702 |
| GB United Kingdom | #9 | ≈630,000 est. | ≈1 in 105 | 3.8K | Richard | 469 |
| BR Brazil | #29 | 429,575as Ricardo | 1 in 493 | 470K | Ricardo | 287 |
| PH Philippines | #7 | ≈380,000 est. | ≈1 in 290 | — | Richard | 195 |
| CA Canada | #9 | ≈270,000 est. | ≈1 in 139 | 17 | Richard | 355 |
| PT Portugal | #13 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 92 | listed | Ricardo | 258 |
| NZ New Zealand | #8 | ≈45,000 est. | ≈1 in 108 | — | Richard | 227 |
| IE Ireland | #7 | ≈43,000 est. | ≈1 in 120 | — | Richard | 183 |
1,575,998 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; the pt-irn-lista-nomes register. 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)
Richard 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 German, Germanic dithematic name from ric + hard ‘ruler/power’ + ‘strong’; page demonstrates compositional-fugen loss and many surname spellings in -t/-d/-ert/-ers.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
In French, From Germanic ric “strong” + hard “hard, firm”; not originally the French common sense of “rich man.”
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
In English, from AN Ricard, CentralFr Richard, OGmc Ric(h)ard ‘powerful brave’; first attested Ricard 1066 DB
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In French, Germanic name meaning ‘strong/rich ruler’; used in the text as a father’s name in patronymics.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
In enm, Germanic ‘ruler hard’; common in medieval England and established in Ireland.
as a nameIrish 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)
- Richard III of Englandb. 1452GBking of England from 1483 to 1485
- Richard Francis Burtonb. 1821GBBritish explorer, army officer, writer and scholar (1821–1890)
- Richard Straussb. 1864DEGerman composer and orchestra director (1864–1949)
- Richard Buckminster Fullerb. 1895USAmerican architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist (1895–1983)
- Derek Harold Richard Bartonb. 1918GBEnglish organic chemist (1918–1998)
- Richard Harrisb. 1930IEIrish actor, singer, film director and writer (1930–2002)
- Richard Ernstb. 1933CHSwiss physical chemist and Nobel laureate (1933–2021)
- Richard Flanaganb. 1961AUAustralian writer and novelist
- Mobyb. 1965USnot in their usual nameAmerican musician, DJ and record producer
- Adam Sandlerb. 1966USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor and comedian
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 168 sources across 85 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.6M | #11 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 68K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 67K | #453 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 50K | #778 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 4.4K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 1.5K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.4K | #11 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 477 | #453 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 68 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 17 | #273 |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Lista de Nomes Próprios admitidos | — | — | — |
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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- 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 are other forms of the name Richard?
- In the etymology graph, Ricardo, Riccardo and Ryszard are forms of the same name in other languages; Rick, Ricky and Rickey are recorded short or pet forms.
- What does the name Richard mean, and where does it come from?
- From the male personal name Richard, of Germanic origin, literally ‘power-brave’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Richard a male or female name?
- Richard 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 Richard have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.6 million people named Richard, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled richard.
- How common is the name Richard?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,575,998 people named Richard in 2020, about 1 in 211 residents.
- How common is Richard compared with other names?
- In the United States, Richard is the 9th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Richard?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/richardThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Richard” — the 9th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.