Gearldine
Feminine · “spear-ruler”
Gearldine is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 4,686 girls against 5 boys since 1880.
Gearldine has an e and an a in the wrong order, and that is exactly what you would expect from a name coined in a Tudor sonnet and transmitted by ear ever since. Geraldine was invented by a poet writing to a young woman of the FitzGerald family, and almost nobody who has used it since has read the poems.
How old is the name Gearldine?
Gearldine first appears in US birth records in 1908 — 117 years ago. The typical Gearldine alive today was born around 1939, making them about 86 years old. About 2,000 people named Gearldine are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Gearldine most popular?
Gearldine peaked in 1935, reaching #491 nationally. See the whole 1935 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Gerald to Gearldine
The story of Gearldine
The Earl of Surrey wrote his sonnets to the Fair Geraldine in the fifteen-thirties, and the name entered English from them — one of very few English names with a known author and decade. Names that spread by hearing rather than by reading drift in spelling, and this one has drifted: Geraldine, Gearldine, Jeraldine and Geraldene all appear in American records. The ea transposition is the commonest of them, because the syllable is unstressed and nobody sounds the vowel at all.
Meaningscholars disagree
spear-ruler
Geraldine is built on Gerald, a Germanic compound of ger, a spear, and wald, rule, by way of the surname FitzGerald — son of Gerald. So the meaning arrives at two removes, through a family name and a literary coinage. The elements themselves are documented; what is uncertain is how much a coinage inherits. The transposed vowels change nothing at all.
How the name formed
- Gerald
- FitzGerald
- Geraldine
- Gearldine
Related forms: Gearóidín · Geraldina
Pronouncing Gearldine
JAIR-ul-deen
JAIR-ul-deen, three syllables, stress at the front, the middle reduced, the g soft. Geraldine and Gearldine are said identically; the transposed letters are inaudible and always have been.
Nicknames for Gearldine
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1908
- Most girls named
- 1935165 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #491reached in 1935
- Change vs 1971
- −44.4%5 in 1977, from 9
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Gearldine in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Gearóidín in Irish — related form
- Geraldina in Italian — related form
Gearldines among us
people named Gearldine are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Gearldine sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It descends from a documented literary coinage with a known author and date.
- Gerry and Dina are both usable short forms and they sound quite different.
- The Germanic elements behind it are concrete and well attested.
- Geraldine is the standard spelling and the transposition reads as a slip rather than a variant.
- The g gets read hard by first-time readers, which is a separate correction from the spelling.
- It belongs firmly to an earlier American century and has not returned.
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Gearldine
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Gearldines are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,000 people named Gearldine are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Gearldine in 2025?
- Gearldine is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Gearldine with classmates?
- Gearldine will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More G names
The most-given names starting with G, all years combined.
Grace#38 · Gloria#654 · Gladys#3211 · Geraldine#2438 · Gail#8362 · Gertrude#6546 · Georgia#99 · Gina#2076
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Gearldine? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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