Gerald
Gerald is a boy's name that peaked in 1942, when it was the 22nd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,204th. About 218,000 Geralds are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 67.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Gerald boys named Gerald
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 451,351
- Estimated living today
- 218,000
- Median age today
- 67
- Peak year
- 1942
- Best rank
- 22nd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,204th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 2,385 / 448,966
How old the living Geralds are
born that year still alive today
Of the 451,351 babies given the name since 1880, about 218,000 are alive — 48 in every hundred. Roughly 5,000 of them are children and 120,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1958 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.
Where the name comes from
Origin Germanic languages
From Old French, ultimately from Frankish *gaiʀ (“spear”) + *wald (“might, power”). The name was brought to England by the Normans. It survived in Ireland, and was revived in the 19th century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Geralds
- Gerald Ford (1913–2006)president of the United States from 1974 to 1977
- Gerald Edelman (1929–2014)American biologist
- Gerald Vanenburg (born 1964)Dutch association football player
- Gerald Durrell (1925–1995)British naturalist and writer
- Gérald Passi (born 1964)French association football player
- Gerald Asamoah (born 1978)German association football player
- Gerald of Wales (1146–1220)medieval clergyman and historian
- Gerald Gardner (1884–1964)British Wiccan leader
People named Gerald with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Gerald is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Gerald is most concentrated in North Dakota (2.4×), Wisconsin (2.2×), Michigan (2.1×), Nebraska (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1942
The most popular boys’ names the year Gerald peaked:
Gerald elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Gérald +1 spelling | 32,125 | 59th |
| Austria boys | Gerald | 2,925 | 32nd |
| Ireland boys | Gerald | 1,537 | 57th |
| Scotland boys | Gerald | 541 | 91st |
| England and Wales boys | Gerald | 377 | 865th |
| New Zealand boys | Gerald | 104 | 90th |
| Poland boys | Gerald | 58 birth registrations | 402nd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Gerald | 37 | 169th |
| Switzerland boys | Gerald | 18 | 1,021st |
| France girls | Gérald | 10 | 796th |
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.
Gerald: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Gerald | 16 | 0.001% | 965th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Gerald | 1 | 0.000% | 618th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Gerald | 1 | 0.002% | 203rd |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
Gerald: rank by region
In 2025, Gerald was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Gerald | 312 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Gerald 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 | Gerald | 1,056 | 2,254 |
| Finland boys | Gerald | 28 | 64 |
| the Netherlands girls | Gerald | — | 5 |
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.
Where Gerald lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 253 men called Gerald were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palmas, Las | Gerald | 17 | 0.029 | 2,459 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Gerald | 29 | 0.029 | 2,031 |
| Balears, Illes | Gerald | 16 | 0.026 | 2,142 |
| Málaga | Gerald | 19 | 0.022 | 2,077 |
| Barcelona | Gerald | 53 | 0.018 | 2,535 |
| Tarragona | Gerald | 6 | 0.014 | 3,191 |
Listed in 11 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 41 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Gerald 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.