Hildegard
The girl's name Hildegard has been in the national records since 1888, with 1,945 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 7,491st. About 390 Hildegards are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 67.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Hildegard
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,945
- Estimated living today
- 390
- Median age today
- 67
- Peak year
- 1915
- Best rank
- 738th
- Rank in 2025
- 7,491st
- First recorded
- 1888
How old the living Hildegards are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,945 babies given the name since 1888, about 390 are alive — 20 in every hundred. 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 German
Borrowed from German Hildegard in the 19th century; ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *Hildigardu.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Hildegards
- Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179)German Benedictine abbess, polymath, mystic and Doctor of Church
- Hildegard Knef (1925–2002)German actress, singer and writer
- Hildegard of Vinzgouw (758–783)Queen of the Franks and Blessed (c. 771 – 783)
- Hildegard Falck (born 1949)German middle distance runner
- Hildegard Behrens (1937–2009)German operatic soprano
- Hildegard Lächert (1920–1995)Nazi concentration camp guard
- Hildegard Peplau (1909–1999)American nurse and nursing theorist
- Hildegard Burjan (1883–1933)Austrian politician and blessed
People named Hildegard with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Hildegard is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Hildegard is most concentrated in Minnesota (16.8×), Wisconsin (13.1×), New York (3.6×), Illinois (1.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1915
The most popular girls’ names the year Hildegard peaked:
Hildegard elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Hildegard | 230 | 476th |
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.
Hildegard 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Hildegard | 11 | 250 |
A count of people on a register – 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
Hildegard 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.