Ërnest

given name · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Ërnest is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 114,307 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2020. In Ghana it is the 11th most common given name. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from German Ernst, a medieval royal name in Germany, from Old High German ernust (“vigor, strife”). Ërnest is also written ארנסט in Hebrew, ერნესთ in Georgian and Эрнест in Cyrillic.

  • GHGhana≈1 in 610(inferred from the name graph)
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 1.4K
  • SGSingapore≈1 in 1.4K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Ërnest itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

114,307 people, 2020

#646 (measured from records)

of 15M given names, spellings grouped

5 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Record sources
541 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 614 (inferred from the name graph)

Ghana, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Ërnest in other scripts: Hebrew, Georgian, Cyrillic and 1 more

(measured from records)
ËrnestLatin(measured from records)
ארנסטËrnest in Hebrew(measured from records)
ერნესთËrnest in Georgian(measured from records)
ЭрнестËrnest in Cyrillic(measured from records)
에르네스트Ërnest in Korean (Hangul)(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Ernest in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CA Canada and 5 more.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)
Derivation of Ërnest: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Ërnest
  1. GermanErnst(measured from records)
  2. Old High Germanernust“vigor“vigor, strife”(measured from records)

Borrowed from German Ernst, a medieval royal name in Germany, from Old High German ernust (“vigor, strife”).

Cited for this meaning 6

  • A concise dictionary of first names
  • Irish first names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wiktionary
  • Dictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition

Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

(measured from records)

Ërnest counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Ërnest is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#266114,3071 in 2.9K114KErnest541
NG Nigeria#480≈90,000 est.≈1 in 2.6KlistedErnest115
GH Ghana#11≈56,000 est.≈1 in 614—Ernest114
ZA South Africa#129≈45,000 est.≈1 in 1.4K—Ernest96
GB United Kingdom#298≈41,000 est.≈1 in 1.7K18Ernest232
CA Canada#296≈25,000 est.≈1 in 1.6K7Ernest215
SE Sweden—9,668as Ernst1 in 1.1K9.7KErnest46
SG Singapore#183≈4,400 est.≈1 in 1.4K—Ernest106

114,307 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Evidence

(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Ërnest under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Ërnest mean, and where does it come from?
Borrowed from German Ernst, a medieval royal name in Germany, from Old High German ernust (“vigor, strife”). Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and Irish first names and 4 other sources.
Is Ërnest a male or female name?
Ërnest is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
Which countries have the most people named Ërnest?
In the United States, the national register counted about 114 thousand people named Ërnest, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ernest. After it come Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and United Kingdom; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Ërnest?
In the United States, the national register counted 114,307 people named Ërnest in 2020, about 1 in 2.9 thousand residents.
How common is Ërnest compared with other names?
In the United States, Ërnest is the 266th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Ërnest?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%C3%ABrnest

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Ërnest” — ranked 492nd in the United States (Census Bureau, 2020). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Ërnest parses inside a full name →