Walter

244,847 people in America carry this name — ranked #227 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Greatest Generation.

Say it WAWL tur

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

W AO1 L T ER0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 244,847 2020 Census
  • Rank #227 Common
  • Per 100,000 81.1 about 1 in 1,354 people
  • As a surname 45,791 ranked #739 the other way round

What Walter means and where it comes from

Teutonic in origin, reading literally as “powerful warrior”.

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.

How often Walter has been given

628,272 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1918, with 13,418 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1920s. It has been given more 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 for Walter

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

Better avoided

  • Walter Robert — runs together
  • Walter William — same opening
  • Walter Richard — 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.

Nicknames for Walter

Short forms as recorded in a 19th-century glossary of Christian names, so the list is old rather than complete.

A name from before the war

The year most children were called Walter was 1918. Names of that age tend to come back once their owners are grandparents.

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

99.8% men
426 women

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

Full names people carry

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.

The same name abroad

  • Wat English
  • Waltl Bav
  • Water English
  • Waters Lett
  • Watier O.|Fr
  • Watlis Swiss
  • Wolder Dutch
  • Wouter Dutch
  • Thaiter Irish
  • Walther German
  • Waltier O.|Fr
  • Wattles English
  • Waldheri Frank

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 Walter

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

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

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 67.5%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 16.0%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 12.3%
  • Two or more races — 2.3%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.3%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.6%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Where in America Walter is thickest on the ground

In Mississippi the name is given 2.4 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Mississippi ×2.4
  • the District of Columbia ×2.1
  • Alaska ×2.1
  • Alabama ×1.8
  • South Carolina ×1.7

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.

Spellings of Walter

Walter is how 92% of them spell it — 267,563 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Try it First-Year Costs

Open First-Year Costs on its own page

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