Herman
Herman reached its high-water mark in 1921 at number 64, and has been recorded 136,772 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 2,363rd. About 38,000 Hermans are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 67.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Herman boys named Herman
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 136,772
- Estimated living today
- 38,000
- Median age today
- 67
- Peak year
- 1921
- Best rank
- 64th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,363rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 795 / 135,977
How old the living Hermans are
born that year still alive today
Of the 136,772 babies given the name since 1880, about 38,000 are alive — 28 in every hundred. Roughly 1,300 of them are children and 21,000 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 English here (“army”) + man (“man”) It was revived in the 19th century, partly due to American immigrants from continental Europe where the name has been more popular. Compare the German equivalent Hermann.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Hermans
- Herman Melville (1819–1891)American writer and poet
- Herman Van Rompuy (born 1947)Prime Minister of Belgium and President of the European Council
- Herman Hollerith (1860–1929)American statistician and inventor（1860-1929）
- Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738)Dutch botanist, chemist, humanist, and physician
- Herman Wouk (1915–2019)American writer
- Herman Cain (1945–2020)American businessman
- Władysław I Herman (1043–1102)Duke of Poland
- Herman Bang (1857–1912)Danish writer
People named Herman with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Herman is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Herman is most concentrated in Louisiana (2.8×), Mississippi (2.6×), Arkansas (2.5×), Alabama (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1921
The most popular boys’ names the year Herman peaked:
Herman elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Herman | 5,695 | 20th |
| France boys | Herman | 785 | 1,573rd |
| Sweden boys | Herman | 644 | 99th |
| Poland boys | Herman | 36 birth registrations | 412th |
| England and Wales boys | Herman | 21 | 3,895th |
| Belgium boys | Herman | 10 | 1,025th |
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.
Herman: rank by region
In 1996, Herman was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Herman | 688 | 5 |
In 2025, Herman was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Herman | 269 | 3 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.
Herman 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 | Herman | 18,655 | 41,616 |
| Finland boys | Herman | 309 | 4,555 |
| the Netherlands girls | Herman | — | 266 |
Among boys in Finland this is mostly a middle name: of the 4,555 who carry it, 309 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.
Where Herman lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 291 men called Herman 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Herman | 35 | 0.035 | 1,757 |
| Girona | Herman | 10 | 0.024 | 2,144 |
| Valladolid | Herman | 6 | 0.023 | 1,682 |
| Valencia/València | Herman | 31 | 0.023 | 2,113 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Herman | 7 | 0.022 | 2,184 |
| Málaga | Herman | 17 | 0.019 | 2,284 |
Listed in 15 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 37 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
Herman 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.