9BabyNames Baby names with meanings & US popularity data

Conrad

Pronunciation
[Co-nrad]
Gender
Male
Meaning
Honest Advisor Brave: Wise.
Origin
German
Conrad is of Old German origin, and the meaning of Conrad is "brave, bold ruler or counsel".

About the Name Conrad

Conrad descends from the Old Germanic Konrad, composed of kuoni (bold, brave) and rad (counsel, advice) — yielding "brave counselor" or "bold adviser." The name has been used continuously in Germanic and English-speaking countries since the medieval period, anchored by multiple medieval German emperors named Conrad.

Notable bearers include American novelist Joseph Conrad (using Conrad as a surname, Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857–1924, the iconic Polish-British novelist of Heart of Darkness 1899 and Lord Jim 1900 — widely considered one of the greatest figures of late-19th and early-20th-century English literature); American businessman Conrad Hilton (using Hilton as a surname, 1887–1979, the iconic American hotel magnate and founder of Hilton Hotels); American actor Conrad Ricamora; and the contemporary fictional Conrad of various contemporary novels.

Conrad held a US top-200 boys' rank from 1880 through 1955. After a long mid-late 20th-century quiet period, the name has been climbing back through the 2010s and 2020s as part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Theodore, Otto, and Augustus. Conrad climbed back into the US top 300 boys' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal is its layered Old Germanic-American pedigree combined with two firm syllables — the in-built brave-counselor etymological register, the strong Joseph Conrad American literary cultural anchor and Conrad Hilton American business anchor, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Germanic and contemporary American. Common nicknames Conrad itself rarely shortens — Connie (the dominant warm short form, gender-neutral and casual), Conny, Rad (back-end shortening), and the rare Drad each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Conrad and Konrad (German original) have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Konrad (German original), Corrado (Italian), Conrado (Spanish/Portuguese), Konstantin (alternate Slavic), and the original Old Germanic Konrad.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Conrad

1,055
German baby names in our dictionary
584
German male names
329
6-letter C-names in our dictionary
791
C-male names total
2000–2025
years of US SSA records (26 total)
10,225
total US births named Conrad (all years)

US Popularity History (2000–2025)

🔥 Rising fast: Conrad climbed 134 places in the US boys ranking over the last 5 years (#551 in 2020 → #417 in 2025).

Annual US births named Conrad by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2025 with 770 boys named Conrad (boy rank #417 that year).

Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.

Where in the US Is Conrad Most Popular?

Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Conrad the strongest states are Maine, Utah, Idaho.

Strongest boys-name states

# State Avg rank Births
1 Maine #202 18
2 Utah #322 142
3 Idaho #347 40
4 Nebraska #363 47
5 Iowa #371 79
6 Missouri #371 167
7 Colorado #382 145
8 Wisconsin #388 131
9 Minnesota #421 130
10 Indiana #429 156

Weakest boys-name states

# State Avg rank Births
1 New Jersey #791 46
2 Georgia #766 95
3 Louisiana #654 51
4 New York #645 208
5 Florida #641 219
6 Alabama #627 45
7 North Carolina #627 134
8 Texas #626 404
9 Tennessee #612 107
10 Maryland #583 59

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Conrad in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

NameMeaningGenderOrigin
Connie Strong Willed Or Wise Male Irish
Konrad Bold Adviser. Male German

Famous People Named Conrad

2 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Conrad.

  • Conrad Black is a British former newspaper publisher and author who has been convicted of felony.
  • Conrad Hilton — Entrepreneur (1887)

Browse more famous Conrads and similar first names →

Looking for names like Conrad?

A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.

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Compare Conrad to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Conrad against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Compare to a different name →

Conrad Baby Name Ideas