Gerald

At the 2020 census, 4,847 Americans bore the surname Gerald — 6,695th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 61,700.

By the numbers

People: 4,847
Rank: 6,695th
How common: 1 in 61,700
Per 100,000: 1.6

Where the name comes from

From Old French, ultimately from Frankish *gaiʀ (“spear”) + *wald (“might, power”). The name was brought to England by the Normans. It survived in Ireland, and was revived in the 19th century.

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

Who bears the name

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

Black, not Hispanic 47.9%
White, not Hispanic 41.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.5%
Hispanic or Latino 4.2%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Gerald

Matt Gerald (born 1970)American actor

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

Surnames like Gerald

Also a first name

Gerald has been given to 451,351 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1942. 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.