Bernie
Bernie is a boy's name that peaked in 1960, when it was the 522nd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 8,243rd. About 5,300 Bernies are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 64.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Bernie boys named Bernie
Girls and boys called Bernie
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 1,535 girls and 9,225 boys in all, and in 2006 the split was 0 to 25.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 95 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 10,760
- Estimated living today
- 5,300
- Median age today
- 64
- Peak year
- 1960
- Best rank
- 522nd
- Rank in 2025
- 8,243rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,535 / 9,225
How old the living Bernies are
born that year still alive today
Of the 10,760 babies given the name since 1880, about 5,300 are alive — 49 in every hundred. Roughly 240 of them are children and 2,500 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1961 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 Bernies
- Bernie Sanders (born 1941)United States Senator from Vermont
- Bernie Mac (1957–2008)American actor
- Bernie Ecclestone (born 1930)British business magnate
- Bernie Taupin (born 1950)British songwriter
- Bernie Casey (1939–2017)American actor, artist, and professional football player
- Bernie Leadon (born 1947)American musician
- Bernie Moreno-Mejía (born 1967)American politician and businessman
- Bernie Parent (1945–2025)Canadian ice hockey player
People named Bernie with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Bernie is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Bernie is most concentrated in New Mexico (9.7×), West Virginia (3.3×), Kentucky (2.5×), Colorado (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1960
The most popular boys’ names the year Bernie peaked:
Bernie elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Bernie | 299 | 985th |
| Ireland boys | Bernie | 52 | 491st |
| France boys | Bernie | 25 | 6,547th |
| England and Wales girls | Bernie | 19 | 3,695th |
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.
Related names
Bernie 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.