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Hulda

Girls' name

Gentle, graceful

Hulda has been given to 5,407 babies in the U.S. since 1880. 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 1895, with 167 recorded.

Babies named Hulda, 1980

1 in 689,000

Hulda over time, 1880–2025

Girls
05010015020018801900192019401960198020002020

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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Hulda: meaning, origin, and history

Gentle, graceful

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Hulda means

Hulda means “gentle, graceful”, associated with huld.

Origin, language, and formation

Hulda is used in Danish, Faroese, Finnish, German, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish.

Pronunciation and spelling

In Finnish, Hulda is pronounced /ˈhuldɑ/.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 5,407 girls were recorded with the name Hulda between 1880 and 1980. Its highest annual count was 167 in 1895; its best national rank was #171 in 1885.

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 Hulda?

Hulda had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 1980, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 1980
1 in 689,000
5 of 3,444,198 births
Among girls only
1 in 332,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 1980
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
477,468 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Hulda 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 1980 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 477,468 children born in 1980 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Hulda. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Huldas were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Hulda was born before 1904 — so the typical Hulda is around 121 today.

Median birth year
1904
About 121 years old
Biggest decade
1890s
25.4% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
0.59%
Mostly a past generation
Recorded since 1950
92
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1890s — 25.4% of all recorded uses (1,374).

Is Hulda 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 1895 (167)
Years since peak
130
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
30.9% average annual change
Best rank ever
#171
1885

Spellings of Hulda

Hulda is not the most common spelling — Julia is, with 57.4% against Hulda's 0.65%.

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 Hulda is used

Across 1910–2025, Hulda was most concentrated in North Dakota — about 1 in 5,263 girls, against 1 in 131,689 across all states with data. It was least common in Texas (1 in —).

019 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1North Dakota1 in 5,263
  2. 2South Dakota1 in 25,000
  3. 3Kansas1 in 33,333
  4. 4Minnesota1 in 33,333
  5. 5Nebraska1 in 33,333
  6. 6Illinois1 in 100,000
  7. 7Indiana1 in 100,000
  8. 8Michigan1 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. Hulda has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Hulda around the world

Where Hulda 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
    1907–1911
    #915
    in 1911
  • Norway
    1880–2023
    #489
    in 2023

Popularity data from Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques and Statistics Norway. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. SSB data under CC BY 4.0.

Notable people named Hulda

People whose public names include Hulda, 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.

Hulda 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
#171
1885
Peak year
1895
167 that year
First recorded
1880
Last recorded
1980
All-time count
5,407
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Hulda

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

GoldaTildaImeldaZeldaEldaNeldaVeldaNildaGildaAldaWildaValdaMeldaMathildaHuldahHildaGriseldaMildaAwildaIldaEmeldaMatildaReldaYalda

Names with a curve like Hulda

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

NelleBessMathildaBellMaymeMabelleMyrtieHettieMetaPearleAugustaCordie

Sibling names for Hulda

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 Hulda

Top names of 1895, Hulda's peak yearThe 1890s in fullOther names that peaked in 1885More old lady namesGirls' names starting with HIcelandic Girl Names