Bernhard
given name · German · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Bernhard is a given name, most frequently recorded in Germany, where it is the 88th most common given name. It appears chiefly in German and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: From the German, Dutch and Scandinavian forms of the Germanic male personal name Bernhard, literally ‘bear-brave’ or ‘bear-strong’.
- ATAustria1 in 303◐
- DEGermany1 in 439
- CHSwitzerland1 in 1.2K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈9.0K ●
- Sources
- 246 ●
- 1 in 2.2K ◐
across 12 countries
295K records
Official registry-verified
Sweden
Meaning & origin●
From the German, Dutch and Scandinavian forms of the Germanic male personal name Bernhard, literally ‘bear-brave’ or ‘bear-strong’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #88 | 276,163 | 258K rec. | — | — | Bernhard | 246 |
| AT Austria | #56 | 54,630 | 14K rec. | — | 10K | Bernhard | 167 |
| NL Netherlands | #928 | 15,198 | 714 rec. | — | 2.4K | Bernhard | 65 |
| CH Switzerland | #93 | 6,668 | 2.6K rec. | — | 2.2K | Bernhard | 106 |
| SE Sweden | — | 4,545△ | 193 rec. | 1 in 2.2K | 4.5K | — | 46 |
| US United States | — | 1,534 | 12K rec. | 1 in 217K | 3.7K | Bernhard | 235 |
| BE Belgium | — | 1,483 | 1.4K rec. | — | 22 | Bernhard | 40 |
| FI Finland | — | 1,357△ | 18 rec. | 1 in 4.1K | 4.9K | — | 18 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 766 | 545 rec. | — | — | Bernhard | 63 |
| NO Norway | — | 688△ | 167 rec. | 1 in 7.9K | 2.4K | Bernhard | 35 |
| CA Canada | — | 458 | 532 rec. | — | 3 | Bernhard | 55 |
| DK Denmark | — | 287 | 0 rec. | 1 in 20K | 287 | — | 1 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- German351K81%
- English24K5%
- Finnish16K4%
- Western Frisian8.2K2%
- Dutch6.6K2%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| German | 351,389 | 81% |
| English | 23,640 | 5% |
| Finnish | 16,197 | 4% |
| Western Frisian | 8,179 | 2% |
| Dutch | 6,567 | 2% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Bernhard 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 French, German form of Bernard; Germanic ‘bear’ + ‘strong, hardy’.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In German, from Germanic *bern- 'bear' + *hard- 'hard, strong'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, a male given name from Old High German, equivalent to English Bernard.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, Zum Rufnamen Bernhard (‘Bär’ + ‘hart’/‚stark, kühn‘); umfasst Kurz- und Nebenformen wie Bernd, Bernt, Berendt, Benno usw.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
In German, aus germ. Bern-hard, 'Bär' + 'stark/kühn'; zeigt dentale Plosiv-Varianten -d/-t/-th/-dt, mit Belegen in vielen Regionen.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1880 | 8 |
| 1881 | 6 |
| 1883 | 5 |
| 1884 | 7 |
| 1886 | 5 |
| 1887 | 10 |
| 1889 | 10 |
| 1891 | 5 |
| 1892 | 7 |
| 1893 | 9 |
| 1894 | 8 |
| 1895 | 5 |
| 1896 | 6 |
| 1898 | 6 |
| 1899 | 7 |
| 1900 | 5 |
| 1905 | 7 |
| 1906 | 8 |
| 1909 | 7 |
| 1910 | 8 |
| 1912 | 16 |
| 1913 | 26 |
| 1914 | 22 |
| 1915 | 41 |
| 1916 | 55 |
| 1917 | 50 |
| 1918 | 27 |
| 1919 | 41 |
| 1920 | 45 |
| 1921 | 27 |
| 1922 | 30 |
| 1923 | 31 |
| 1924 | 36 |
| 1925 | 28 |
| 1926 | 24 |
| 1927 | 29 |
| 1928 | 33 |
| 1929 | 31 |
| 1930 | 27 |
| 1931 | 27 |
| 1932 | 21 |
| 1933 | 22 |
| 1934 | 25 |
| 1935 | 19 |
| 1936 | 28 |
| 1937 | 21 |
| 1938 | 18 |
| 1939 | 19 |
| 1940 | 20 |
| 1941 | 13 |
| 1942 | 17 |
| 1943 | 19 |
| 1944 | 16 |
| 1945 | 12 |
| 1946 | 12 |
| 1947 | 21 |
| 1948 | 17 |
| 1949 | 14 |
| 1950 | 18 |
| 1951 | 11 |
| 1952 | 12 |
| 1953 | 22 |
| 1954 | 20 |
| 1955 | 14 |
| 1956 | 22 |
| 1957 | 19 |
| 1958 | 17 |
| 1959 | 24 |
| 1960 | 21 |
| 1961 | 20 |
| 1962 | 24 |
| 1963 | 25 |
| 1964 | 12 |
| 1965 | 22 |
| 1966 | 22 |
| 1967 | 15 |
| 1968 | 12 |
| 1969 | 15 |
| 1970 | 16 |
| 1971 | 6 |
| 1972 | 9 |
| 1973 | 7 |
| 1974 | 5 |
| 1976 | 7 |
| 1977 | 7 |
| 1978 | 6 |
| 1979 | 9 |
| 1982 | 8 |
| 1983 | 6 |
| 1984 | 5 |
| 1985 | 7 |
| 1986 | 6 |
| 1987 | 6 |
| 1990 | 6 |
| 1991 | 11 |
| 1995 | 5 |
| 1997 | 12 |
| 1998 | 5 |
| 2000 | 5 |
| 2001 | 5 |
| 2004 | 5 |
| 2010 | 5 |
| 2015 | 5 |
| 2017 | 5 |
| 2021 | 6 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 105 years between 1880–2021. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltkeb. 1800DEGerman Field Marshal (1800–1891)
- Bernhard Riemannb. 1826DEGerman mathematician (1826–1866)
- Alfred Nobelb. 1833SEnot in their usual nameSwedish chemist and inventor (1833–1896)
- Bernhard von Bülowb. 1849DEGerman and Prussian politician (1849–1929)
- Bernhard Rustb. 1883DEGerman Holocaust perpetrator (1883-1945)
- Ernst Buschb. 1885DEnot in their usual nameGerman field marshal (1885-1945)
- Bernhard zur Lippe-Biesterfeldb. 1911NLhusband of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands (1911-2004); prince consort of the Netherlands (1911-2004)
- Bernhard Wickib. 1919ATAustrian actor and film director (1919–2000)
- Bernhard Schlinkb. 1944DEGerman writer
- Johan Friso van Oranje-Nassau van Amsbergb. 1968NLnot in their usual namesecond son of Beatrix of the Netherlands and Claus von Amsberg; brother of King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands (1968-2013)
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●
Attested in 75 sources across 33 countries.
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 560 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Bernhard?
- We estimate roughly 9.0 thousand people bear Bernhard (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
- In which country does Bernhard have the most bearers?
- Bernhard is most frequently recorded in Germany, where it is most often spelled bernhard.
- How common is Bernhard compared with other names?
- In Germany, Bernhard is the 88th most common given name of 154,506 given names recorded there.
- Is Bernhard a male or female name?
- Bernhard 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.
- What does the name Bernhard mean?
- Recorded meaning: From the German, Dutch and Scandinavian forms of the Germanic male personal name Bernhard, literally ‘bear-brave’ or ‘bear-strong’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bernhardThe 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. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Bernhard” — the 88th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.