Gerald

258,431 people in America carry this name — ranked #207 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it JEH ruhld

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

JH EH1 R AH0 L D — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 258,431 2020 Census
  • Rank #207 Common
  • Per 100,000 85.6 about 1 in 1,283 people
  • As a surname 4,847 ranked #6,695 the other way round

What Gerald means and where it comes from

Teutonic in origin, reading literally as “spear power”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Gerald through the years

450,339 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1942, with 11,514 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40s 50 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1940s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names that fit Gerald

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Gerald David — runs together
  • Gerald Daniel — runs together
  • Gerald Donald — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Going quiet

Gerald has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Silent Generation.

Is Gerald a boy's or a girl's name?

99.8% men
598 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

The states where Gerald is most common

In Louisiana the name is given 2.1 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Louisiana ×2.1
  • the District of Columbia ×1.9
  • Michigan ×1.8
  • New Mexico ×1.5
  • Pennsylvania ×1.5

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

This name in other languages

  • Gerelt Fris
  • Girault French
  • Giraldo Italian
  • Giralda Italian
  • Guirauld French
  • Girroald French
  • Giraldus Latin
  • Geraldine English

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Names built the same way as Gerald

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Try it Compare Two Names

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One of those is not in the census file.

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Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Teutonic origin