Gertrude
About 177,668 American babies have been named Gertrude since 1880, most of them around 1917. In 2025 it ranked 6,546th. About 14,000 Gertrudes are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 80.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Gertrude boys named Gertrude
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 177,668
- Estimated living today
- 14,000
- Median age today
- 80
- Peak year
- 1917
- Best rank
- 37th
- Rank in 2025
- 6,546th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 177,100 / 568
How old the living Gertrudes are
born that year still alive today
Of the 177,668 babies given the name since 1880, about 14,000 are alive — 8 in every hundred. Roughly 430 of them are children and 12,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1945 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 Proto-Germanic *gaizaz (“spear”) + *þrūþiz (“strength”) or *trut- (“maiden, dear”) ; name of a Belgian seventh century saint.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Gertrudes
- Gertrude B. Elion (1918–1999)American biochemist and pharmacologist
- Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)American author
- Gertrude Bell (1868–1926)British traveller, writer, mountaineer, politician, archaeologist and spy
- Gertrude the Great (1256–1302)Roman Catholic Saint
- Gertrude Jekyll (1843–1932)Garden designer, artist, editor
- Gertrude of Nivelles (626–659)Benedictine abbess and saint
- Elizabeth Gertrude Britton (1858–1934)American botanist
- Gertrude of Saxony (1030–1113)Countess of Holland and Countess of Flanders
People named Gertrude with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Gertrude is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Gertrude is most concentrated in Maine (2.4×), Rhode Island (2.4×), Vermont (2.3×), Massachusetts (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1917
The most popular girls’ names the year Gertrude peaked:
Gertrude elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Gertrude | 4,715 | 171st |
| Ireland girls | Gertrude | 197 | 154th |
| France boys | Gertrude | 30 | 687th |
| England and Wales girls | Gertrude | 21 | 4,739th |
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.
Gertrude 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 | Gertrude | 1,278 | 4,553 |
| the Netherlands boys | Gertrude | — | 152 |
| Finland girls | Gertrude | — | 17 |
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
Gertrude 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.