Hildegard

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Girl · Old High German / Frankish

Hildegard

Say it: HIL-deh-gart

Try it with your surname

Meaning

From Germanic hild 'battle' and gard 'enclosure, protection'.

Certainscholars agree on this meaning.

Long honoured through Hildegard of Bingen, it was a common German girls' name in the early 20th century.

Its wave through time

Fading since the 1900s

In the United States

05101518801900192019401960198020002020Peak 1906per 100,000 babies of that sex
  • 1,859 babies given this name since 1888
  • At its height in 1906, about 1 in 8,700 girls
  • 8 babies in 2020

Through the ages

  1. The Early Middle Ages400 to 800
  2. The High and Late Middle Ages1100 to 1450
  3. Victorian and Belle Époque1837 to 1914
  4. The Modern Age1880 to today

Used by

FrankishGerman

The family of the name

Other spellings: Hildegarde

FrenchHildegarde
ItalianIldegarda
LatinHildegardis

Famous bearers

  • Hildegard of Bingen, abbess, visionary and composer
  • Hildegard of the Vinzgau, wife of Charlemagne

Names worth a look

Where this comes from

  • Royal and noble genealogies
  • Lives of the saints and early Christian martyrologies
  • Calendars of saints and name days
  • United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source

Meanings and histories are compiled from the study of names and their languages and checked by a second review.

Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.