Hermina
Feminine · “army man”
Hermina is a feminine of Herman, and Herman is one of the plainest compounds in the Germanic name stock: the word for an army and the word for a man, joined without decoration. It is also, by a sixteenth-century decision that nobody has ever been able to justify linguistically, the modern German name of the chieftain who destroyed three Roman legions in a forest.
How old is the name Hermina?
Hermina first appears in US birth records in 1882 — 143 years ago. The typical Hermina alive today was born around 1920, making them about 105 years old. About 200 people named Hermina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Hermina most popular?
Hermina peaked in 1882, reaching #596 nationally. See the whole 1882 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From A Germanic compound of army and man to Hermina
The story of Hermina
The Cheruscan leader who ambushed and annihilated three legions in the Teutoburg Forest is known to Roman historians by a Latinized name, and his actual Germanic name is not recorded anywhere. In the sixteenth century, when German scholars were looking for a national founding figure, Luther proposed that the Latin name was a rendering of Hermann, and the identification stuck so thoroughly that the enormous nineteenth-century monument raised to him carries that name. Modern philologists mostly think the derivation does not work. It is a good example of how a name can be attached to a historical figure retrospectively, by people with a reason to want the attachment, and then become the thing everybody knows. The feminine forms are older and quieter, and they traveled into American registers with German, Dutch and Hungarian families in the ordinary way.
Meaning
army man
Two Germanic elements, one meaning an army or a host and one meaning a man, and the reading is not in dispute. The -ina ending is a Latin feminine suffix used across German, Dutch, Italian and Hungarian to build women's names from men's, and it carries no sense of its own. So the meaning belongs entirely to the base, and it is a description of a role rather than a wish for a child.
How the name formed
- A Germanic compound of army and man
- Herman across the German and Dutch-speaking lands
- Hermina and Hermine as Latin feminines
- Carried to America by German and Hungarian families
Related forms: Hermine · Hermina · Hermina · Erminia
Pronouncing Hermina
her-MEE-nuh
Three syllables with the stress in the middle. German gives the -ine ending a final vowel that English drops, and Hungarian says it with the stress on the first syllable instead, which is the rule for every word in that language.
Nicknames for Hermina
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
- 1882
- Most girls named
- 192059 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #596reached in 1882
- Change vs 1971
- −25.0%9 in 1977, from 12
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.
Hermina in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Hermine in German — spelling variant
- Hermina in Dutch — same name
- Hermina in Hungarian — same name
- Erminia in Italian — related form
Herminas among us
people named Hermina 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
Hermina 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 is a genuine inherited name used across four European languages with almost no change.
- Mina and Ina are both waiting inside it and both stand alone perfectly well.
- The meaning is short, concrete and easy to explain to a child.
- It will be heard as Hermione or Herminia on a first introduction.
- The first syllable carries the English word her, which some readers will notice and nobody can prevent.
- It is firmly of an older generation of American naming and has had no revival.
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What they receive
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Hermina
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Herminas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 200 people named Hermina are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Hermina in 2025?
- Hermina is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Hermina with classmates?
- Hermina will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More H names
The most-given names starting with H, all years combined.
Helen#461 · Heather#1261 · Hannah#56 · Hazel#21 · Holly#416 · Hailey#104 · Haley#861 · Heidi#340
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Hermina? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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