Bernie
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Bernie is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: English diminutive of Bernard; ‘bear’ + ‘strong, hardy’.
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 2.9K
- CACanada≈1 in 8.6K
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
- 435 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈66,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
English diminutive of Bernard; ‘bear’ + ‘strong, hardy’.
Sources 1
- Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bernie 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 | — | ≈66,000 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Bernie | 13 |
| PH Philippines | #621 | ≈38,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | 28K | Bernie | 114 |
| US United States | — | 7,302 | 1 in 46K | 16K | Bernie | 435 |
| CA Canada | #805 | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 8.6K | — | Bernie | 172 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 18K | 5 | Bernie | 191 |
| IE Ireland | #212 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Bernie | 89 |
| AU Australia | #966 | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 9.3K | 1 | Bernie | 173 |
| NZ New Zealand | #623 | ≈460 est. | ≈1 in 11K | 10 | Bernie | 72 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Top 500 First Names in the Philippines (PSA FOI response, tracking; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–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)
Bernie 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 English, nickname from Berenice or Bernadette
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In gmw-ecg, a diminutive of the male given name Bernhardt
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Bernie Hamiltonb. 1928USAmerican actor (1928–2008)
- Bernie Kopellb. 1933USAmerican actor
- Bernie Krauseb. 1938USAmerican musician, author, soundscape recordist and bio-acoustician (*1938)
- Bernie Caseyb. 1939USAmerican actor, artist, and professional football player (1939–2017)
- Bernie Sandersb. 1941USUnited States Senator from Vermont
- Bernie Worrellb. 1944USAmerican musician (1944–2016)
- Bernie Bickerstaffb. 1944USAmerican basketball coach and executive
- Bernie Wrightsonb. 1948USAmerican illustrator (1948–2017)
- Bernie Shawb. 1957CACanadian singer
- Bernie Coulsonb. 1965CACanadian actor
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 48 sources across 29 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 285 | #65,133 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 282 | #73,993 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 258 | #74,826 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 are other forms of the name Bernie?
- In the etymology graph, Veronica, Ben and Ronnie are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Bernice and Bernadette.
- What does the name Bernie mean, and where does it come from?
- English diminutive of Bernard; ‘bear’ + ‘strong, hardy’. Recorded by Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms.
- Is Bernie a male or female name?
- Bernie 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 Bernie have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 66 thousand people named Bernie in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bernie.
- How common is the name Bernie?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,302 people named Bernie in 2020, about 1 in 46 thousand residents.
- How common is Bernie compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Bernie is the 212th most common given name of 14,976 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bernie?
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/bernieThe 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, “Bernie” — the 212th most common given name in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.