Bernhard
About 1,671 American babies have been named Bernhard since 1880, most of them around 1916. It has not appeared in the national data since 2021. About 550 Bernhards are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 63.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Bernhard
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,671
- Estimated living today
- 550
- Median age today
- 63
- Peak year
- 1916
- Best rank
- 840th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Bernhards are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,671 babies given the name since 1880, about 550 are alive — 33 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1962 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Bernhards
- Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866)German mathematician
- Bernhard von Bülow (1849–1929)German and Prussian politician
- Bernhard Schlink (born 1944)German writer
- Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld (1911–2004)husband of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands (1911-2004); prince consort of the Netherlands
- Bernhard Cullmann (born 1949)German footballer
- Bernhard Rust (1883–1945)German Holocaust perpetrator
- Bernhard Wicki (1919–2000)Austrian actor and film director
- Bernhard Grzimek (1909–1987)German zoo director and author
People named Bernhard with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Bernhard is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Bernhard is most concentrated in New York (8.5×), Minnesota (6.8×), Wisconsin (3.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1916
The most popular boys’ names the year Bernhard peaked:
Bernhard elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austria boys | Bernhard | 9,279 | 14th |
| Norway boys | Bernhard | 692 | 189th |
| France boys | Bernhard | 110 | 419th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Bernhard among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Bernhard | 2,400 | 5,778 |
| Finland boys | Bernhard | 43 | 1,351 |
| the Netherlands girls | Bernhard | — | 21 |
Among boys in Finland this is mostly a middle name: of the 1,351 who carry it, 43 go by it.
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Bernhard against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.