Bernard

At the 2020 census, 37,873 Americans bore the surname Bernard — 908th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 7,892.

By the numbers

People: 37,873
Rank: 908th
How common: 1 in 7,892
Per 100,000: 12.7

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

from Old French Bernard, Bernart, from Medieval Latin Bernardus, probably from Frankish *Bernhard (cognate with Old High German Bernhart, Old English Beornheard), from Proto-Germanic *Bernuharduz, equivalent. Popularized by medieval European saints.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Bernard described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 58.2%
Black, not Hispanic 27.3%
Hispanic or Latino 8.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Bernard

Claude Bernard (1813–1878)French physiologist
Émile Bernard (1868–1941)French painter
Tristan Bernard (1866–1947)French playwright
Alain Bernard (born 1983)French swimmer
Carlos Bernard (born 1962)American actor
Éric Bernard (born 1964)French racing driver
Günter Bernard (born 1939)German footballer
Raymond Bernard (1891–1977)French film director

People named Bernard with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Bernard

Also a first name

Bernard has been given to 201,070 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1924. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.