Geraldine
A feminine name of German origin meaning "ruler of the spear".
Name Census estimates that about 63,637 living Americans carry the first name Geraldine. The name is used almost exclusively for girls. The average person named Geraldine today is around 71 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Geraldine births was 1930 (5,471 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Geraldine. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
For a British comparison, Name Census UK has a UK baby-name profile for Geraldine with official rankings and popularity over time.
Key insights
- • Although Geraldine is used almost entirely for girls, the SSA data does show 748 boys registered with the name since 1880.
- • The typical person named Geraldine is about 71 years old today, placing it firmly among the names of earlier generations. Most living Geraldines were born before 1965.
- • Compared to the 1930s, recent registration numbers for Geraldine have dropped to less than 5% of what they once were.
People living today
64K
~ 1 in 5,386 Americans
Peak year
1930
5,471 babies that year
Average age
71
years old
1989 SSA rank
#2,013
Tracked since 1880
Census
Geraldine in the 2020 Census
The 2020 Census recorded 92,416 people with the first name Geraldine, which placed it at #578 in the published first-name tables. This is a snapshot of people who already had the name at the time of the Census.
The SSA sections elsewhere on this page answer a different question: how often parents gave the name to babies over time. The "people living today" figure on this page is different again: it is a current estimate built from SSA birth records and age-based survival rates, so the two numbers are not expected to match exactly.
2020 Census rank
#578
National first-name rank
People counted
92K
92,416 in the published race/origin table
Per 100,000
30.6
People with this name in 2020
Largest reported group
White
67.5% of people with this name
Demographics
Ancestry and ethnicity for Geraldine
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Geraldine is White at 67.5%. The next largest groups are Black (18.9%) and Hispanic (8.0%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself.
The bar chart below shows how people with the first name Geraldine described their own race and ethnicity on the 2020 Census form. The Census Bureau groups responses into six broad categories: White, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Two or More Races. When a category has too few respondents for a given name, the Bureau suppresses the figure to protect individual privacy, which is why some names show fewer than six slices.
Percentages are shown so the breakdown is easy to read across every published category. Because the 2020 Census first-name file also includes raw headcounts for each group, Name Census can show those alongside the percentages in the legend and hover tooltip.
Keep in mind that these are self-reported numbers. A first name does not determine a person's race or ethnicity, and the distribution you see here reflects the specific population who happened to carry the name Geraldine at the time of the 2020 Census, not any inherent property of the name itself.
- White67.5% · 62,342
- Black or African American18.9% · 17,482
- Hispanic or Latino8.0% · 7,371
- Asian and Pacific Islander3.1% · 2,857
- Two or more races1.5% · 1,416
- American Indian and Alaska Native1.0% · 948
Gender
Gender distribution for Geraldine
Out of the 212,021 babies given the name Geraldine since 1880, 99.6% were registered as female. The name sits firmly on the female side of the spectrum, with only a handful of male registrations across the entire dataset.
Geraldine as a male name
- Ranked #7,305 in 1989
- 6 male births in 1989
- Peak: 1941 (35 births)
Geraldine as a female name
- Ranked #2,013 in 2024
- 97 female births in 2024
- Peak: 1930 (5,448 births)
2020 Census snapshot
In the 2020 Census sex table, Geraldine appears almost entirely female. Of the 92,416 people counted with this name, 99.8% were female and only a very small share were male.
Popularity
Geraldine: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Geraldine from the 1880s through to the 2020s, spanning 15 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 1930s, with 50,265 total registrations. Usage has dropped considerably from its 1930s peak. The most recent decade brought in only a fraction of the registrations that the name once attracted.
Babies born per year
Decades
Geraldine by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Geraldine during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
Geography
Where Geraldines live
The SSA's state-level files cover 51 states and territories. New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois recorded the most babies named Geraldine, while Alaska, Nevada, Wyoming recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 4,013 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Geraldine
The name Geraldine is a feminine form of the masculine name Gerald, which is derived from the Germanic elements ger meaning "spear" and wald meaning "rule". It is believed to have originated in the medieval English regions during the 12th century.
The name Geraldine was popularized in England and France during the Middle Ages, where it was often used among nobility and aristocratic families. It is thought to have been influenced by the Old French name Geraud, which shared a similar linguistic root.
One of the earliest recorded instances of the name Geraldine can be found in the 13th century romance poem "Roman de la Rose" by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, where a character named Geraldine is mentioned.
Geraldine is also the name of a character in Edmund Spenser's epic poem "The Faerie Queene", published in 1590. This literary work helped to further popularize the name during the Renaissance period.
In the 16th century, Geraldine Disires (c. 1535 - c. 1570) was a French poet and author, known for her work "La Guerre des Masles contre les Femelles" (The War of the Males against the Females).
Another notable historical figure was Geraldine Jewsbury (1812 - 1880), an English novelist and literary critic who was a close friend of the Brontë sisters.
During the early 20th century, Geraldine Farrar (1882 - 1967) was an American operatic soprano who performed leading roles with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
Geraldine Brooks (born 1955) is an Australian-American novelist and journalist, best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "March" in 2006.
Geraldine Ferraro (1935 - 2011) was an American politician and lawyer who made history in 1984 as the first female vice-presidential candidate representing a major political party in the United States.
Notable bearers
Famous people named Geraldine
People
Geraldine + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Geraldine as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with G
Other first names starting with G with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Geraldine: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Geraldine?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 63,637 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Geraldine going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 5,386 US residents.
Is Geraldine a common name?
We classify Geraldine as "Uncommon". It ranks above 99.3% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 212,021 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Geraldine most popular?
The single biggest year for Geraldine was 1930, when 5,471 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Geraldine is about 71 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
How common was Geraldine in the 2020 Census?
The published 2020 Census first-name tables recorded 92,416 people with the name Geraldine, or 30.60 per 100,000 residents. That placed it at #578 in the national Census ranking for first names.
Why is the Census count different from the living estimate?
Because they measure different things. The Census figure is a count of people who had the name Geraldine in 2020. The living estimate aims to answer a current question instead: how many people with the name are alive today, based on SSA birth records and age-based survival rates. Since one number is a 2020 snapshot and the other is a present-day estimate, they are not expected to be identical.
What does the Census say about the gender split for Geraldine?
In the 2020 Census sex table, Geraldine appears almost entirely female. Of the 92,416 people counted with this name, 99.8% were female and only a very small share were male. The Census view is a snapshot of people living with the name in 2020, while the SSA section above tracks births across time.
What does the Census say about the background of people named Geraldine?
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Geraldine is White at 67.5%. The next largest groups are Black (18.9%) and Hispanic (8.0%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself. The percentages in the chart above come from self-reported race and Hispanic-origin responses in the 2020 Census.
Which group reports the name Geraldine most often in the Census?
White is the largest reported group for people named Geraldine in the 2020 Census, accounting for 67.5% (62,342 people in the published table).
Why can the Census sex total and race total differ slightly?
The Census Bureau published separate 2020 tables for sex and for race/Hispanic origin, and the released figures can differ slightly because of privacy protection in the public files. That is why this page treats the gender section and the race/origin section as two related snapshots instead of forcing them into one identical total.
Does every first name have Census demographic data?
No. The public Census first-name release only includes names that met the Bureau's publication rules, so many rarer names in the SSA files have no Census demographic snapshot. When that happens, the SSA trend, gender history, and state sections still appear, but the 2020 Census demographic sections are omitted.
What does the SSA popularity chart show?
The chart tracks births, not the number of people alive with the name today. Each point shows how many babies were given the name Geraldine in that year. That makes it useful for spotting when the name rose, peaked, or faded.
Is Geraldine a female name?
Yes, 99.6% of people registered as Geraldine in the SSA data are female. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Is Geraldine still being used today?
Yes. The SSA still recorded Geraldine in 2024, and the page above shows its latest-year rank where available. A name can be well past its peak and still remain in steady use, especially if it built up a large population over earlier decades.
Why can a name have a lot of living bearers even if it is not trendy now?
Because living-bearer counts and current baby-name popularity measure different things. A name like Geraldine can build up a very large population over many decades, even if fewer parents are choosing it now than they did at its peak.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.
How common is the name Geraldine?
If you just want to know how many Americans are named Geraldine, HowManyOfMe.org gives you the headline number in one glance.