“Spear,” and strength, from the old Germanic courts Well established
Meaning: roughly “spear-strength,” or “strong spear.” Gertrude comes from the Old High German Geretrudis. The first element is agreed on by everyone: ger (or gar), “spear.”1
The second element is read more than one way. Most modern name references give it as drud, “strength,” for the satisfying “spear-strength;” others read it as “beloved, dear;” and the Victorian scholar Charlotte Yonge glossed the whole name as “spear maid.” The spear is certain; the rest is a small, honest scholarly split, which is why we show it rather than pick a winner.23
Two medieval saints carried the name. Gertrude the Great (1256 to 1302) was a German Benedictine mystic of Helfta; Gertrude of Nivelles (around 628 to 659) became a popular patron invoked against rats and mice. Her now-familiar link with cats is a modern, 1980s development, not a medieval one, so we flag it rather than repeat it as old.4
Shakespeare gave the name to Gertrude, Hamlet's mother and Queen of Denmark, which kept it in the cultural air for centuries.5
Popularity over time
A century from the top to the very bottom
1917 · 6,3156,3150
18802025
U.S. · 1880–2025 · counts of people issued a Social Security number, not a full count of births. Live series on the published page.
Gertrude was a genuine early-twentieth-century favourite, near the height of fashion around the 1910s. Then it fell, steadily and almost completely, as Germanic grandmother-names went out of style. Today it is one of the rarest names a baby could be given.
Usage & existence
How often is Gertrude recorded now?
177,668
recorded use · U.S. since 1880
Fading
given less each year
~100% girls
gender usage
1880
first appears in the data
A historic name, now barely used. Gertrude was recorded a great many times across US data since 1880, but those are recorded uses spread over more than a century, not living people, and almost all of them come from its early-1900s heyday. In the most recent years it is given only a handful of times. The dataset begins in 1880, so the figure is bounded by the data; the name itself is far older, reaching back to medieval Germanic Europe. The living figure above is an estimate built from these records and official life tables: how we estimate it.
Shakespeare's Gertrude, Queen of Denmark in Hamlet.
Bearers
Bearer dates (Stein, Bell, Ederle, Gertrude the Great) via Wikipedia / Wikidata structured data.
Meaning is labelled Well established for the “spear” element; the second element is honestly a small scholarly split (“strength,” “beloved,” or Yonge's “maid”), shown rather than forced. Public-domain and modern references are cited for the etymology; saints' and literary facts are referenced, not reproduced; the cat association is dated to the 1980s, not claimed as medieval. Bearer dates are from public structured data.