Herbert
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From Old English Herebeorht and Anglo-Norman Herbert, from a Germanic name meaning literally ‘army-bright’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/hɝbɚt/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Herbert is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Austria it is the 49th most common given name.
- DEGermany≈1 in 301(inferred from the name graph)
- ATAustria≈1 in 377
- CHSwitzerland≈1 in 1.9K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #777 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 492 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 301 (inferred from the name graph)
≈730,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From Old English Herebeorht and Anglo-Norman Herbert, from a Germanic name meaning literally ‘army-bright’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Herbert 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈730,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Herbert | 38 |
| DE Germany | #60 | ≈270,000 est. | ≈1 in 301 | — | Herbert | 228 |
| US United States | #363 | 71,489 | 1 in 4.7K | 71K | Herbert | 492 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.4K | — | Herbert | 108 |
| GB United Kingdom | #411 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | — | Herbert | 266 |
| AT Austria | #49 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 377 | 1.1K | Herbert | 166 |
| SE Sweden | — | 4,871 | 1 in 2.1K | 4.9K | Herbert | 38 |
| CH Switzerland | #235 | ≈4,500 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | 95 | Herbert | 100 |
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; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Herbert is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Germanic ‘army bright’; rare in Ireland, but somewhat fashionable around the early 20th century.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, from Herbert; earliest cited 1744 Richard s. of Richard and Mary Perbert
as a nameWelsh Surnames
from a Germanic personal name composed of the elements heri, hari ‘army’ -F berht ‘bright’, ‘famous’. In Britain, this Old French name, introduced by the Normans, reinforced the less common Old English cognate Herebeorht. The surname was taken to Ireland after the Anglo-Norman invasion and in the 16th century.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from the German personal name. FOREBEARS[This is the name of a great Welsh family, earls of Pembroke, who are descended from William Herbert {d. 1469).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A male given name from the Germanic languages, in modern use partly transferred back from the surname.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Herbert Spencerb. 1820GBEnglish philosopher and political theorist (1820–1903)
- H. H. Asquithb. 1852GBnot in their usual nameBritish politician; Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916 (1852–1928)
- George Herbert Meadb. 1863USAmerican philosopher, sociologist, and psychologist
- Herbert Clark Hooverb. 1874USpresident of the United States from 1929 to 1933 (1874–1964)
- D.H. Lawrenceb. 1885GBnot in their usual nameEnglish writer and poet (1885–1930)
- Herbert Spencer Gasserb. 1888USAmerican physiologist (1888-1963)
- Herbert Brownb. 1912USAmerican chemist (1912–2004)
- Willy Brandb. 1913DEnot in their usual nameGerman politician (SPD), chancellor of West Germany (1969–1974) and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
- Herbert Simonb. 1916USAmerican political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist (1916–2001)
- George H. W. Bushb. 1924USnot in their usual namepresident of the United States from 1989 to 1993 (1924-2018)
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 126 sources across 62 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 71K | #717 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 4.9K | #621 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2023 | 1.1K | #957 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 623 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 116 | #717 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 49 | — |
Reference works 10
- 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
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Herbert mean, and where does it come from?
- From Old English Herebeorht and Anglo-Norman Herbert, from a Germanic name meaning literally ‘army-bright’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Herbert a male or female name?
- Herbert 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.
- In which country does Herbert have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 725 thousand people named Herbert in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled herbert.
- How common is the name Herbert?
- In the United States, the national register counted 71,489 people named Herbert in 2020, about 1 in 4.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Herbert compared with other names?
- In Austria, Herbert is the 49th most common given name of 26,800 given names recorded there.
- What are other forms of the name Herbert?
- In the etymology graph, Heriberto, Bert and Heribert are forms of the same name in other languages; Herb, Bertie and Herbie are recorded short or pet forms.
- How do you pronounce Herbert?
- A machine transcription gives /hɝbɚt/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Herbert?
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/herbertThe 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, “Herbert” — the 49th most common given name in Austria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.