Gerda
The girl's name Gerda has been in the national records since 1887, with 1,099 births to its name. It has not appeared in the national data since 1972. About 210 Gerdas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 74.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Gerda
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,099
- Estimated living today
- 210
- Median age today
- 74
- Peak year
- 1915
- Best rank
- 944th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1887
How old the living Gerdas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,099 babies given the name since 1887, about 210 are alive — 19 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1951 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
Latinate variant of Scandinavian Gerd, from Old Norse Gerðr, garðr (“protection”). The name occurs in nineteenth century Swedish poetry and in Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen (1844).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Gerdas
- Gerda Taro (1910–1937)German photographer, best known for her reporting on the Spanish Civil War
- Gerda Lerner (1920–2013)Austrian-American women's history scholar
- Gerda van der Kade-Koudijs (1923–2015)Dutch athlete
- Gerda Christian (1913–1997)personal secretary of Adolf Hitler
- Gerda Steinhoff (1922–1946)Nazi concentration camp guard
- Gerda Maurus (1903–1968)Austrian actress
- Gerda Weissensteiner (born 1969)Italian bobsledder and luger
- Gerda Kraan (born 1933)Dutch middle distance runner
People named Gerda with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Gerda is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Gerda is most concentrated in Wisconsin (8.2×), New York (7.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1915
The most popular girls’ names the year Gerda peaked:
Gerda elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Gerda | 225 | 345th |
| Norway girls | Gerda | 200 | 209th |
| England and Wales girls | Gerda | 58 | 3,160th |
| Ireland girls | Gerda | 20 | 665th |
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.
Gerda by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 18 | 351st |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Gerda 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 girls | Gerda | 12,069 | 19,663 |
| Finland girls | Gerda | 98 | 179 |
| the Netherlands boys | Gerda | — | 113 |
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
Gerda 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.