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Boys' name · 135,991 recorded births

Herman

#2,363 in the US in 2025

Where Herman stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#2,363boys’ names · US 2025

Herman was the 2,363rd most registered boys' name in the United States in 2025, on 58 births.

peak 1921 · 3,219188019532025

Its moment was 1921, when 3,219 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#2,363US rank, 2025 (boys)
58US births in 2025
#44its best US rank, in 1886
1921peak year — 3,219 births
135,977US births since 1880
14NZ births since 1912
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Herman's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Herman was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Herman in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0203405
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Herman in the United States, 1880–2025

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Herman in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Herman has been registered 14 times since 1912, peaking in 1912 with 14 births. It did not clear the DIA's 10-birth reporting floor in 2025.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.056113
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Herman in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Herman in England & Wales

Herman does not appear in the ONS list for England and Wales. That means it was given to fewer than 3 babies in every year from 2019 to 2025 — not that it is unused there. ONS publishes only those seven years, so a name that had its moment in England before 2019 is invisible here however common it once was.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#48347
1890#50382
1900#49550
1910#52696
1920#663,109
1930#782,598
1940#1131,670
1950#1591,564
1960#2461,050
1970#317616
1980#428367
1990#636252
2000#1,087129
2010#1,88176
2020#2,36656

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Herman most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
New York9,161
Texas8,809
North Carolina6,179
Pennsylvania6,118
Louisiana6,030
Georgia5,780
Illinois5,202
Virginia4,967
Alabama4,798
Ohio4,406

Questions about Herman

How popular is the name Herman?

Herman ranked #2,363 for boys in the United States in 2025, on 58 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Herman most popular?

Herman peaked in 1921, when 3,219 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Herman rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all boys' births, Herman has been steady between 2016 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1921, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.