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Hildegarde

Girls' name

Battle + enclosure, through Hildegard

Hildegarde has been given to 2,326 babies in the U.S. since 1885. 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 1915, with 124 recorded.

Babies named Hildegarde, 1961

1 in 319,000

Hildegarde over time, 1880–2025

Girls
05010015018801900192019401960198020002020

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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Hildegarde: meaning, origin, and history

Battle + enclosure, through Hildegard

Germanic languages

What Hildegarde means

Hildegarde belongs to the name family reached through Hildegarde → Hildegard → Hildegard. Its meaning is “battle + enclosure”.

Origin, language, and formation

Hildegarde is used in English. Its origins include Germanic languages.

Related names and everyday forms

Related names include Hildegard.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 2,326 girls were recorded with the name Hildegarde between 1885 and 1961. Its highest annual count was 124 in 1915; its best national rank was #565 in 1901.

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 Hildegarde?

Hildegarde had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 1961, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 1961
1 in 319,000
13 of 4,142,426 births
Among girls only
1 in 155,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 1961
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
220,871 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Hildegarde sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 1961 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 220,871 children born in 1961 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Hildegarde. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Hildegardes were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Hildegarde was born before 1918 — so the typical Hildegarde is around 107 today.

Median birth year
1918
About 107 years old
Biggest decade
1910s
30.9% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
13.2%
Spread across generations
Recorded since 1950
86
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1910s — 30.9% of all recorded uses (719).

Is Hildegarde 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 1915 (124)
Years since peak
110
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
35.9% average annual change
Best rank ever
#565
1901

Spellings of Hildegarde

Hildegarde is the most-used spelling, taking 54.5% of the 4,271 babies given a near-identical spelling.

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 Hildegarde is used

Across 1910–2025, Hildegarde was most concentrated in Wisconsin — about 1 in 14,286 girls, against 1 in 101,752 across all states with data. It was least common in Texas (1 in —).

07 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Wisconsin1 in 14,286
  2. 2Minnesota1 in 50,000
  3. 3Illinois1 in 100,000
  4. 4Indiana1 in 100,000
  5. 5Missouri1 in 100,000
  6. 6North Dakota1 in 100,000
  7. 7New Jersey1 in 100,000
  8. 8New York1 in 100,000

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls 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. Hildegarde has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Hildegarde around the world

Where Hildegarde 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.

  • France
    1900–2025
    #4,019
    in 2025
  • South Australia
    1981–1981
    #616
    in 1981

Popularity data from Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques and Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0.

Notable people named Hildegarde

People whose public names include Hildegarde, backed by Wikidata given-name records and ordered by linked Wikimedia pages. The name may be a middle name.

People data from Wikidata (CC0). Fame is measured, not judged — the order reflects how widely each person is documented, not the U.S. birth records popularity this page is otherwise about.

Hildegarde by the numbers

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

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#565
1901
Peak year
1915
124 that year
First recorded
1885
Last recorded
1961
All-time count
2,326
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Hildegarde

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

HildagardeHildegardHilariaHildredHildrethHilianaHilarieHillarieHillaryHilliaryHildagardHilleryHilmaHilinaiHilaryHildurHildeHilaHillariHiliaryShardeHiltonHilariGerturde

Names with a curve like Hildegarde

Not spelling — timing. These names rose, peaked and faded in the same years as Hildegarde, so they read as being from the same moment even when they look nothing alike.

MyrleExieMaybellHildredAlvertaMadieEunaBeaulahArvillaEstellAudieEthyl

Sibling names for Hildegarde

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 Hildegarde

Top names of 1915, Hildegarde's peak yearThe 1910s in fullOther names that peaked in 1901Girls' names starting with H