Hermon
Masculine · “set apart”
Hermon is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 3,966 boys against 93 girls since 1880.
Hermon is a mountain. It stands at the northern edge of Israel and the southern edge of Syria and Lebanon, snow on it most of the year, and it is named all through the Hebrew Bible as the limit of the land. In America the name is very new and very rare, and it arrived with families for whom biblical places are ordinary names.
How old is the name Hermon?
Hermon was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Hermon alive today was born around 1931, making them about 94 years old. About 1,000 people named Hermon are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Hermon most popular?
Hermon peaked in 1905, reaching #507 nationally. See the whole 1905 chart.
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Hermon
Mount Hermon is the highest ground anyone in ancient Israel could see, and the psalms use it as a figure for abundance because its snowmelt feeds the Jordan. Greek and Roman writers knew it too, and its slopes carried shrines for a succession of religions. As a personal name it belongs mostly to the Horn of Africa: Eritrean and Ethiopian families draw freely on biblical place names, so that Hermon sits alongside Zion, Sinai and Bethel as an ordinary given name, most often a girl's. That is where nearly all the American Hermons come from, which is why the name appears in the record so late and in such small numbers.
Meaning
set apart, devoted
From the Hebrew root herem, which carries the sense of something separated off and dedicated. The mountain was a sacred site long before the Bible was written, which is a good part of why the name stuck to it.
Pronouncing Hermon
HER-mon
Two syllables with the weight at the front. Tigrinya and Hebrew give the second syllable more length than English does, closer to her-MOHN.
Nicknames for Hermon
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
- 1880
- Most boys named
- 1920114 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #507reached in 1905
- Change vs 2008
- −14.3%6 in 2018, from 7
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.
Hermon in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Chermon in Hebrew — transliteration
- Jabal al-Shaykh in Arabic — related form
- Hermon in Tigrinya — same name
Hermons among us
people named Hermon 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
Hermon 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 spelled as it sounds in English and needs no correction.
- The place behind it is real, mapped and thousands of years old, which very few given names can say.
- It is recognized at once in Eritrean, Ethiopian and Hebrew-speaking company.
- It is extremely rare in the United States, so a child will spend a lot of time explaining it.
- The spelling is recorded for boys as well as girls here, and outside the communities that use it there is no signal either way.
- English readers will hear Herman, which is a different name entirely, and write that instead.
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Hermon
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Hermons are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,000 people named Hermon are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Hermon in 2025?
- Hermon is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Hermon with classmates?
- Hermon will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More H names
The most-given names starting with H, all years combined.
Henry#5 · Harold#991 · Harry#775 · Howard#1002 · Hunter#130 · Herbert#2641 · Herman#2363 · Harvey#251
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Hermon? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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