Harold is an English name, that was extremly popular in the US during the 1920s. It developed from the Germanic name Hereweald that means ‘powerful army’ or ‘mighty army’.
Harold is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Harold 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, Harold ranks 784. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 2 were named Harold. In total, there are currently 525,076 people – children, adults and seniors – named Harold living in the United States, which is approximately 0.16 % of the entire population.
Harold is an English name, that was extremly popular in the US during the 1920s. It developed from the Germanic name Hereweald that means ‘powerful army’ or ‘mighty army’.
Harold is one of few... examples, where a first name also became a surname. In most cases, it is the other way round.
Harold 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 Harold. This means that several boys named Harold 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 Harold has reached its best rank of #12 multiple times, most recently in 1921. The name has also been in the top 100 for many years. This makes Harold one of the most popular names of all time.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Harold was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Harold will be Harold. Like every other year, there have been newborns named Harold in 2022 – in fact 248 to be precise, confirming Harold as is still a very popular first name. In this most recent year for which US-wide statistics are available, the name ranked #862 among all boys‘ names. For comparison, the least popular year for this first name was 2021, when only 230 baby boys were named Harold.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Harold is one of them. However, Harold is not equally widespread in all states, but people in West Virginia seem to particularly fancy this name – the 10,834 men called Harold who live here are 0,707% of all male residents and push their name up to #27 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in West Virginia. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 525,076 people with the name Harold. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Harold on position 61 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 H is not particularly common as a first letter for boys' names: only 2.9% of all common boys' names in the US begin with an H. The most common first letters for boys' names are J and A, while X and U are the least common first letters of boys' names.
With six letters, the name Harold 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.
This means that if 2.9% of all boys' names begin with an H, this initial letter is less common than the other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are of course some names that begin with H and are extremely popular, for example Henry, currently the most common boys’ name with H.
If your name is Harold 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 Harold, you can simply say:
Hat
Apple
Rocket
Orange
Lion
Dinosaur
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Harold
Harold
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
H
A
R
O
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.
H
A
R
O
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. Harold sounds like this:
