Gerda

Where Gerda comes from

Latinate variant of Scandinavian Gerd, from Old Norse Gerðr, garðr (“protection”). The name occurs in nineteenth century Swedish poetry and in Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen (1844).
— Wiktionary's entry for Gerda
  • Germanic
  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1887
    First appearance
    #1,036 among girls, 6 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  2. 1890
    Peak, #872
    10 babies named Gerda — more than any year before or since.
  3. 1891
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #1,332.
  4. 1910
    Gerda Taro born
    German photographer, best known for her reporting on the Spanish Civil War
  5. 1920
    Gerda Lerner born
    Austrian-American women's history scholar
In the dictionary
  • A female given name from the Germanic languages occasionally used in English, mostly around 1900.
Namesakes
  • Gerda Taro · German photographer, best known for her reporting on the Spanish Civil War, 1910–1937
  • Gerda Lerner · Austrian-American women's history scholar, 1920–2013
  • Gerda van der Kade-Koudijs · Dutch athlete, 1923–2015
  • Gerda Christian · personal secretary of Adolf Hitler, 1913–1997
  • Gerda Steinhoff · Nazi concentration camp guard, 1922–1946

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.