Gerald: Meaning of Baby Name Gerald

About the Name Gerald

Gerald is a name of Old High German origin built from gēr ("spear") and wald ("rule, power"), yielding the meaning "he who rules by the spear" — a martial compound that suited the medieval aristocratic tradition in which the name flourished. It entered England via Normandy after the Conquest and was used continuously through the medieval period before receding and then enjoying a strong American revival in the early twentieth century, fuelled by the same appetite for solid Germanic-root names that simultaneously lifted Harold, Donald, and Ronald up the charts.

Gerald first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1908 and rose steadily to its peak of #19 in 1936, making it one of the standard men's names of the Depression and wartime generation. Its chart longevity is considerable: Gerald remained in the top-1000 all the way to 2020, when it ranked #955 — a 112-year presence in American naming records that places it among the most durable Germanic-origin names in the SSA dataset.

Today Gerald occupies a sturdy, mid-century classic tier — names that feel solidly anchored rather than fashionable, with a quiet potential for rediscovery as parents seek substantial, unfussy names with deep historical roots. Its compact two-syllable form is easy to carry, and the wide variant family gives parents several routes into the same tradition. Recorded variants include Gary, Gerard, Jerold, Jerrald, Jerrold, and Jerry.

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

Quick Facts About Gerald

1,055

German baby names in our dictionary

584

German male names

181

6-letter G-names in our dictionary

470

G-male names total

1908–2020

years of US SSA records (84 total)

401,804

total US births named Gerald (all years)

US Popularity History (1908–2020)

📉 Falling fast: Gerald dropped 190 places in the US boys ranking over the last 5 years (#765 in 2015 → #955 in 2020).

Annual US births named Gerald by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1942 with 11,483 boys named Gerald (boy rank #22 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2020, ranked #955 for boys (230 US births). That's 933 places below its 1942 peak.

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 Gerald 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 Gerald the strongest states are South Carolina, Michigan, Louisiana.

Strongest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	South Carolina	#569	21
2	Michigan	#621	102
3	Louisiana	#667	58
4	Alabama	#667	38
5	Maryland	#715	52
6	New Jersey	#733	43
7	Pennsylvania	#744	92
8	Florida	#760	133
9	New York	#777	107
10	Virginia	#780	40

Weakest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Texas	#1,047	89
2	California	#1,001	108
3	North Carolina	#904	50
4	Georgia	#902	46
5	Missouri	#898	15
6	Ohio	#896	65
7	Illinois	#861	54
8	Indiana	#794	36
9	Minnesota	#787	17
10	Virginia	#780	40

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

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Gary	Carries Spears	Male	English
Gerard	Spear Strong. See Also Jerard.	Male	French
Jerold	Variant Of Gerald Rules By The Spear.	Male	Spanish
Jerrald	Variant Of Gerald Rules By The Spear.	Male	Spanish
Jerrold	Variant Of Gerald Rules By The Spear.	Male	Spanish
Jerry	Abbreviation Of Names Beginning With Jer- See Also Gerry.	Male	English

Looking for names like Gerald?

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.

See all names like Gerald →

Compare Gerald to Other Popular Names

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

Gerald vs Liam 239,320 births since 2014

Gerald vs Noah 230,181 births since 2014

Gerald vs Oliver 164,076 births since 2014

Gerald vs William 159,918 births since 2014

Gerald vs James 157,850 births since 2014

Gerald vs Elijah 153,351 births since 2014

Gerald vs Benjamin 147,449 births since 2014

Gerald vs Lucas 141,302 births since 2014

Compare to a different name →