Gerda
given name · German · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Gerda is a given name, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country. It appears chiefly in German and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from Germanic element meaning 'spear' or 'enclosure'.
- NLNetherlands1 in 879◐
- ZASouth Africa1 in 24K
- AUAustralia1 in 83K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈34K ●
- Sources
- 185 ●
- 1 in 879 ◐
across 15 countries
38K records
Official registry-verified
Netherlands
Meaning & origin●
from Germanic element meaning 'spear' or 'enclosure'
Sources 1
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Attested across 19 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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | #732 | 19,663△ | 1.9K rec. | 1 in 879 | 20K | Gerda | 66 |
| DK Denmark | — | 4,304△ | 2 rec. | 1 in 1.4K | 4.3K | — | 2 |
| SE Sweden | — | 3,273△ | 35 rec. | 1 in 3.1K | 3.3K | — | 11 |
| US United States | — | 2,561 | 28K rec. | 1 in 130K | 2.6K | Gerda | 185 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 1,893 | 1.9K rec. | — | listed | Gerda | 66 |
| ZA South Africa | — | 1,424 | 1.4K rec. | — | — | Gerda | 57 |
| AU Australia | — | 1,399 | 1.4K rec. | — | 1 | Gerda | 62 |
| PL Poland | — | 1,266△ | 21 rec. | 1 in 30K | 1.3K | — | 1 |
| BR Brazil | — | 815△ | 1 rec. | 1 in 260K | 1.1K | Gerda | 3 |
| CA Canada | — | 722 | 778 rec. | — | — | Gerda | 49 |
| LV Latvia | — | 653△ | 4 rec. | 1 in 2.9K | 654 | — | 6 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 538△ | 1 rec. | 1 in 20K | 538 | — | 2 |
Roughly 20K people in Netherlands bear this name (about 1 in 879). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- German94K32%
- English56K19%
- Western Frisian32K11%
- Dutch31K11%
- Danish21K7%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| German | 93,575 | 32% |
| English | 56,023 | 19% |
| Western Frisian | 31,733 | 11% |
| Dutch | 30,823 | 11% |
| Danish | 20,946 | 7% |
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●
Gerda 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 English, A female given name from the Germanic languages occasionally used in English, mostly around 1900.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Danish, a female given name of Old Norse origin
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, Origine germanique, signifie « lance précieuse »; forme féminine allemande de Gérard.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, Du germanique *ger* « lance » + *-hild* « combat » ou forme courte de noms en Ger-.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In German, short form with ger- 'spear'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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 |
|---|---|
| 1887 | 6 |
| 1888 | 7 |
| 1889 | 7 |
| 1890 | 10 |
| 1891 | 5 |
| 1892 | 6 |
| 1893 | 8 |
| 1894 | 8 |
| 1895 | 12 |
| 1896 | 8 |
| 1897 | 7 |
| 1898 | 14 |
| 1899 | 14 |
| 1900 | 7 |
| 1901 | 7 |
| 1903 | 13 |
| 1904 | 10 |
| 1905 | 9 |
| 1906 | 15 |
| 1907 | 11 |
| 1908 | 10 |
| 1909 | 9 |
| 1910 | 18 |
| 1911 | 14 |
| 1912 | 25 |
| 1913 | 22 |
| 1914 | 20 |
| 1915 | 49 |
| 1916 | 38 |
| 1917 | 21 |
| 1918 | 26 |
| 1919 | 27 |
| 1920 | 30 |
| 1921 | 21 |
| 1922 | 18 |
| 1923 | 13 |
| 1924 | 22 |
| 1925 | 24 |
| 1926 | 27 |
| 1927 | 20 |
| 1928 | 26 |
| 1929 | 17 |
| 1930 | 31 |
| 1931 | 13 |
| 1932 | 22 |
| 1933 | 15 |
| 1934 | 19 |
| 1935 | 32 |
| 1936 | 15 |
| 1937 | 16 |
| 1938 | 27 |
| 1939 | 15 |
| 1940 | 12 |
| 1941 | 10 |
| 1942 | 9 |
| 1943 | 11 |
| 1944 | 7 |
| 1945 | 11 |
| 1946 | 7 |
| 1949 | 8 |
| 1950 | 12 |
| 1951 | 7 |
| 1952 | 6 |
| 1953 | 12 |
| 1954 | 8 |
| 1955 | 8 |
| 1956 | 7 |
| 1957 | 6 |
| 1958 | 5 |
| 1959 | 9 |
| 1960 | 5 |
| 1961 | 11 |
| 1962 | 7 |
| 1963 | 8 |
| 1964 | 5 |
| 1966 | 5 |
| 1967 | 5 |
| 1968 | 5 |
| 1972 | 7 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 79 years between 1887–1972. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Gerda Gottliebb. 1885FRDanish artist (1885-1940)
- Gerdy Troostb. 1904DEnot in their usual nameGerman art dealer, purchaser for Linz and personal adviser in art matters to Hitler.; architect
- Gerda Bormannb. 1909DEwife of Martin Bormann (1909-1946)
- Gerda Tarob. 1910DEGerman photographer, best known for her reporting on the Spanish Civil War (1910–1937)
- Gerda Christianb. 1913DEpersonal secretary of Adolf Hitler (1913–1997)
- Gerda Lernerb. 1920USAustrian-American women's history scholar (1920-2013)
- Gerda Steinhoffb. 1922DENazi concentration camp guard (1922–1946)
- Gerda Weissmann Kleinb. 1924PLauthor, historian, speaker and Holocaust survivor (1924–2022)
- Gerda Hasselfeldtb. 1950DEGerman politician and president of the German Red Cross
- Gerda Weissensteinerb. 1969ITItalian bobsledder and luger
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 73 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 20K | #109 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 12K | #322 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 4.3K | #155 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 3.3K | #783 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.6K | #6,280 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 1.7K | #1,184 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 1.4K | #1,355 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 1.3K | #442 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20) | 2026 | 1.3K | #442 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 1.1K | #8,495 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 928 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 815 | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 2026-09-12 data build · 551 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Gerda?
- We estimate roughly 34 thousand people bear Gerda (counting its spellings and scripts) across 15 countries in our records.
- In which country does Gerda have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 20 thousand people bear Gerda in the Netherlands, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled gerda.
- Where is Gerda most common?
- Gerda is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 879 people carrying it.
- How common is Gerda compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Gerda is the 732nd most common given name of 134,847 given names recorded there.
- Is Gerda a male or female name?
- Gerda is a female 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 Gerda mean?
- Recorded meaning: from Germanic element meaning 'spear' or 'enclosure'
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/gerdaThe 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, “Gerda” — the 732nd most common given name in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.