Gerard
The boy's name Gerard has been in the national records since 1886, with 58,932 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 1,708th. About 34,000 Gerards are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 62.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Gerard boys named Gerard
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 58,932
- Estimated living today
- 34,000
- Median age today
- 62
- Peak year
- 1956
- Best rank
- 180th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,708th
- First recorded
- 1886
- Girls / boys
- 112 / 58,820
How old the living Gerards are
born that year still alive today
Of the 58,932 babies given the name since 1886, about 34,000 are alive — 58 in every hundred. Roughly 2,600 of them are children and 15,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1963 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 Middle English Gerard, from Old French Gerart, from Frankish *Gaiʀahard.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Gerards
- Gérard Depardieu (born 1948)French actor
- Gerard Piqué (born 1987)Spanish association football player
- Gerard 't Hooft (born 1946)Dutch theoretical physicist
- Gerard Butler (born 1969)Scottish actor and film producer
- Gérard Philipe (1922–1959)French actor
- Gérard Mourou (born 1944)French physicist, winner of Nobel Prize in Physics 2018
- Gerard Kuiper (1905–1973)Netherlands-born American astronomer
- Gérard Debreu (1921–2004)French economist and mathematician
People named Gerard with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Gerard is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Gerard is most concentrated in New Hampshire (6.3×), Maine (6.3×), Rhode Island (5.7×), Massachusetts (4.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1956
The most popular boys’ names the year Gerard peaked:
Gerard elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Gérard +1 spelling | 379,390 | 4th |
| Ireland boys | Gerard | 14,484 | 10th |
| Spain boys | Gerard | 8,883 | 66th |
| Scotland boys | Gerard | 1,226 | 74th |
| England and Wales boys | Gerard | 715 | 462nd |
| Poland boys | Gerard | 646 birth registrations | 151st |
| New Zealand boys | Gerard | 614 | 87th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Gerard | 515 | 57th |
| France girls | Gérard | 250 | 480th |
| Belgium boys | Gérard +1 spelling | 107 | 516th |
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.
Gerard: rank by region
In 2025, Gerard was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Gérard | 498 | 11 |
| Flanders | Gerard | 806 | 6 |
In 2012, Gerard was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Spain.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cataluña | Gerard | 9 | 600 |
In 2025, Gerard was given 2 times or more in 2 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Gerard | 312 | 2 |
| Pomorskie | Gerard | 179 | 3 |
In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Gerard appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (140th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, 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.
Gerard 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 | Gerard | 19,296 | 45,817 |
| the Netherlands girls | Gerard | — | 269 |
| Finland boys | Gerard +1 spelling | 15 | 55 |
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 Gerard lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 22,069 men called Gerard 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lleida | Gerard | 1,392 | 5.912 | 23 |
| Girona | Gerard | 2,183 | 5.243 | 34 |
| Tarragona | Gerard | 2,190 | 4.996 | 38 |
| Barcelona | Gerard | 13,332 | 4.571 | 44 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Gerard | 394 | 1.262 | 115 |
| Balears, Illes | Gerard | 665 | 1.068 | 131 |
Listed in 43 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 9 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
Gerard 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.