Hildebrand
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: from the personal name Hildebrand, of Germanic origin, meaning ‘flaming sword of battle’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/hɪldəbɹænd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Hildebrand is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 28K(measured from records)
- BRBrazil1 in 292K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 22K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 78 (measured from records)
- 1 in 22K (inferred from the name graph)
11,687 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
from the personal name Hildebrand, of Germanic origin, meaning ‘flaming sword of battle’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Hildebrand is read(measured from records)
Hildebrand is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English73%
from the personal name Hildebrand, of Germanic origin, meaning ‘flaming sword of battle’
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Old Germanic Hildebrand/Eldebrand 'battle-sword'; first attested Hildebrand lorimarius 1086 DB (Nf).
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
- German12%
from Germanic *hildjō- 'battle' + *brand- 'sword, fire'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
from Germanic hild 'battle' + brand 'sword, fire-brand'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Germanic surname from the old personal name Hildebrand; plate shows dental plosive spelling variants. Bearer count: 14,186.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hildebrand 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 11,687 | 1 in 28K | 12K | Hildebrand | 78 |
| BR Brazil | — | 724 | 1 in 292K | 724 | Hildebrand | 71 |
| SE Sweden | — | 458 | 1 in 22K | 458 | — | 8 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 383 | 1 in 22K | 383 | Hildebrand | 7 |
| PL Poland | — | 370 | 1 in 103K | 202 | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | — | 299 | 1 in 58K | 299 | Hildebrand | 4 |
| DK Denmark | — | 177 | 1 in 33K | 177 | — | — |
| PY Paraguay | #989 | — | — | — | Hildebrand | 13 |
11,687 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Hildebrand is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
from a Germanic personal name composed of the elements hild ‘strife’, ‘battle’ -t- brand ‘fire’ ‘sword’. Hildebrand! (2110) German and Danish: variant of Hildebrand.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Bror Emil Hildebrandb. 1806SESwedish archaeologist (1806–1884)
- Bruno Hildebrandb. 1812DEGerman economist (1812-1878)
- Hans Hildebrandb. 1842SESwedish archeologist and numismatist (1842–1913)
- Hilde Hildebrandb. 1897DEGerman actress and singer (1897–1976)
- Klaus Hildebrandb. 1941DEGerman historian
- Dan Hildebrandb. 1962GBBritish actor
- Philipp Hildebrandb. 1963CHSwiss banker (born 1963)
- Timo Hildebrandb. 1979DEGerman association football player
- Aaron Hildebrandb. 1980DEGerman actor
- Brianna Hildebrandb. 1996USAmerican actress (born 1996 or 1997)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 43 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 12K | #3,072 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 11K | #2,932 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 11K | #3,306 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 724 | #12,250 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 458 | #2,014 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 383 | #3,431 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 299 | #6,912 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 202 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 202 | #16,284 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 177 | #2,924 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 168 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 168 | #18,962 |
Reference works 8
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Hildebrand mean, and where does it come from?
- from the personal name Hildebrand, of Germanic origin, meaning ‘flaming sword of battle’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Hildebrand?
- A machine transcription gives /hɪldəbɹænd/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Hildebrand have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 12 thousand people named Hildebrand, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hildebrand.
- Where is Hildebrand most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Hildebrand is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 22 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Hildebrand?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,687 people named Hildebrand in 2010, about 1 in 28 thousand residents.
- How common is Hildebrand compared with other names?
- In Paraguay, Hildebrand is the 989th most common surname of 30,328 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Hildebrand?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/hildebrandThe 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, “Hildebrand” — the 989th most common surname in Paraguay. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.