Already in the Middle Ages, the name Gerald was known in England. It is a Germanic name meaning ‘power of the spear’. However, it became less and less popular until its revival in the 19th century.
Gerald is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Gerald 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, Gerald ranks 778. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 2 were named Gerald. In total, there are currently 441,297 people – children, adults and seniors – named Gerald living in the United States, which is approximately 0.13 % of the entire population.
Already in the Middle Ages, the name Gerald was known in England. It is a Germanic name meaning ‘power of the spear’. However, it became less and less popular until its revival in the 19th century.
Gerald was a very... popular name from the 1930s to the 1950s in the US.
Gerald is the epitome of perseverance. Every year since first names have been registered in the U.S., parents have come up with the idea of naming their son Gerald. This means that several boys named Gerald have witnessed significant events such as the first Nobel Prize ceremony, the moon landing, the release of the first cell phone, or the turn of the millennium. The first name Gerald has reached its best rank of #19 multiple times, most recently in 1939. The name has also been in the top 100 for many years. This makes Gerald one of the most popular names of all time.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Gerald was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Gerald is one of them. However, Gerald is not equally widespread in all states, but people in North Dakota seem to particularly fancy this name – the 3,581 men called Gerald who live here are 0,629% of all male residents and push their name up to #34 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in North Dakota. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 441,297 people with the name Gerald. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Gerald on position 68 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 G is not really common as a first letter for boys' names: only 2.8% of all common boys' names in the US begin with G. By the way, the most common first letters of boys' names are J, A and D, while X, U and Q are the least common initials of boys' names.
With six letters, the name Gerald 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 with 2.8% of all boys' names beginning with a G, this initial letter is less common than the other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are boys' names with G that are quite popular, the most common at present is George.
If your name is Gerald 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 Gerald, you can simply say:
Goat
Elephant
Rocket
Apple
Lion
Dinosaur
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Gerald
Gerald
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
G
E
R
A
L
D
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.
G
E
R
A
L
D
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. Gerald sounds like this:
