The English name Walter comes from the Germanic name Waltheri meaning ‘power of the army’. It consists of ‘walt’ for ‘power, authority’ and ‘heri’ for ‘army’.
Walter is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Walter isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Walter ranks 291. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 7 were named Walter. In total, there are currently 565,492 people – children, adults and seniors – named Walter living in the United States, which is approximately 0.17 % of the entire population.
The English name Walter comes from the Germanic name Waltheri meaning ‘power of the army’. It consists of ‘walt’ for ‘power, authority’ and ‘heri’ for ‘army’.
In the U.S.,... Walter was rarely used as a female name until about 1940.
The name Walter belongs to the USA like the Constitution, baseball and the White House. Why? Well, quite simply, Walter is one of only 442 boys’ names that have been given in the U.S. every year since official name statistics began in 1880. However, of course, the name has not been equally widespread in all 143 years – it was most popular far back in the last century: In 1914, Walter was one of the top 10 most popular baby boy names in the entire United States - ranking #10 on our SmartGenius baby name charts.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Walter was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 1914, when the name Walter was at the height of its popularity, 8,999 newborns were named Walter by their parents - in 2022, by contrast, the name was given only 1,273 times and Walter ranked #260 on our list of the most popular boys' names.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Walter is one of them. However, Walter is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Mississippi seem to particularly fancy this name – the 14,472 men called Walter who live here are 0,724% of all male residents and push their name up to #19 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in Mississippi. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 565,492 people with the name Walter. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Walter on position 57 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter W is quite rare as an initial letter for boys' names: only 1.5% of all common boys' names in the US begin with a W, which means that this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. Nevertheless, W is by no means the rarest initial. While J, A and D are the most common first letters of boys' names, X, U and Q are the least common initials of feminine first names.
With six letters, the name Walter is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that since 1.5% of all boys’ names begin with a W, this initial occurs less than half as often as the other letters on average. By the way, of the comparatively few boys' names that begin with a W, William is currently the most common.
If your name is Walter and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Walter, you can simply say:
Windmill
Apple
Lion
Tiger
Elephant
Rocket
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Walter
Walter
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
W
A
L
T
E
R
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
W
A
L
T
E
R
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Walter sounds like this:
