Name Awesome

Herve

Boys' name

Form of Harvey

Herve has been given to 560 babies in the U.S. since 1911. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1921, with 25 recorded.

Babies named Herve, 2023

1 in 474,000

Herve over time, 1880–2025

Boys
010203018801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Herve: meaning, origin, and history

Form of Harvey

Breton

What Herve means

Herve is a form of Harvey.

Documented naming usage and pronunciation

Herve is used in Breton.

Meaning behind the documented name family

The name developed through Herve → Harvey. The family’s meaning is “iron + blazing”, recorded in English with the source elements hoiarn and viu.

Origin, language, and formation

Herve is used in Cebuano. Its origins include Breton.

Herve comes through French Hervé.

Related names and everyday forms

Related names include Harvey.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 560 boys were recorded with the name Herve between 1911 and 2023. Its highest annual count was 25 in 1921; its best national rank was #1,527 in 1921.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

Wiktionary material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

How common is Herve?

Herve had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2023, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2023
1 in 474,000
7 of 3,314,783 births
Among boys only
1 in 244,000
<0.01% of boys
Rank, 2023
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
328,234 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Herve sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Liam (20,818)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2023 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 328,234 children born in 2023 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Herve. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Herves were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Herve was born before 1930 — so the typical Herve is around 95 today.

Median birth year
1930
About 95 years old
Biggest decade
1920s
28.7% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
3.4%
Mostly a past generation
Recorded since 1950
168
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1920s — 28.7% of all recorded uses (161).

Is Herve rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1921 (25)
Years since peak
104
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
25.5% average annual change
Best rank ever
#1,527
1921

Spellings of Herve

Herve is not the most common spelling — Harvey is, with 67.9% against Herve's 0.30%.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Herve is used

Across 1910–2025, Herve was most concentrated in Massachusetts — about 1 in 25,000 boys, against 1 in 103,482 across all states with data. It was least common in New York (1 in —).

04 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Massachusetts1 in 25,000
  2. 2Rhode Island1 in 50,000
  3. 3New York1 in —

Shading is the share of that state's recorded boys given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Herve has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Herve around the world

Where Herve ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • England & Wales
    2007–2007
    #4,333
    in 2007
  • France
    1900–2025
    #5,211
    in 2025
  • Canada
    1993–2021
    #2,357
    in 2021

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics, Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques and Statistics Canada. ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. StatCan data under Statistics Canada Open Licence.

Herve by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a boy's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#1,527
1921
Peak year
1921
25 that year
First recorded
1911
Last recorded
2023
All-time count
560
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Herve

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

HeronHershHersonHermesHeroHerbyHershyHeruHeroldHernyHarveHerseyHeraldHerbieHerveyHershalHeriHerchelHerlinHermiloHernanHermannHerselHercules

Sibling names for Herve

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Herve

Top names of 1921, Herve's peak yearThe 1920s in fullOther names that peaked in 1921Boys' names starting with HBreton Boy NamesShort French Boy Names