Herson
Masculine · “Hebrew Gershom”
Herson and Gerson are the same name written twice. In Spanish the letter g before an e says a harsh h, so the two spellings are homophones, and one of them simply writes the sound directly.
How old is the name Herson?
Herson first appears in US birth records in 1985 — 40 years ago. The typical Herson alive today was born around 2004, making them about 21 years old. About 500 people named Herson are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Herson most popular?
Herson peaked in 2000, reaching #3299 nationally. Today it ranks #9714, 6,415 places below that high. See the whole 2000 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Gershom to Herson
The story of Herson
Spanish spelling is famously regular in one direction, from letters to sounds, and famously ambiguous in the other. The letter g says one sound before a, o and u and a completely different one before e and i, where it merges with j and with the aspirated h of some dialects. That single overlap generates a large family of alternative spellings in the American data from Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan families: Gerson and Herson, Geovanny and Jeovanny, Genesis and Jenesis. None of them is a new name; each is a decision about which letter to use for a sound Spanish can write three ways. Reading them as inventions gets the mechanism backwards. They are the output of a spelling system meeting a name that was borrowed rather than inherited.
Meaningscholars disagree
Hebrew Gershom, a sojourner there
Gerson is the Spanish and Portuguese form of Gershom or Gershon, the elder son of Moses. The book of Exodus explains the name as ger sham, a stranger there, but that is a wordplay offered by the text rather than a linguistic derivation, and the actual origin is unsettled. The Herson spelling is a Central American phonetic form; the peak is 2000.
How the name formed
- Gershom
- Gerson
- Herson
Related forms: Gerson · Gershom · Gerson
Pronouncing Herson
HER-son
Two syllables, stress on the first in Spanish. English speakers reading the spelling say it the same way, which is the point of the respelling.
Nicknames for Herson
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
- 1985
- Most boys named
- 200631 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #3299reached in 2000
- Change vs 2024
- −22.2%7 in 2025, 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.
Herson in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Gerson in Spanish — spelling variant
- Gershom in Hebrew — same name
- Gerson in Portuguese — same name
Hersons among us
people named Herson are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 244,011 born in 2025 was named Herson
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Zalman test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Herson's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Zalman climbed just as high around 1949, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Zalman's path sketches the road Herson is walking now.
Herson sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Herson beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Herson in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The spelling matches the sound in both Spanish and English, which the g-form does not.
- Two syllables and six letters.
- The biblical figure behind it is documented.
- Gerson is the standard spelling and the two will be treated as one name in records.
- The first syllable is the English word her in print.
- The biblical meaning given in Exodus is a wordplay, not an etymology.
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Herson
Masculine · #9714 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Hersons are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 500 people named Herson are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Herson in 2025?
- Herson ranks #9714 among US boy names in 2025, with 7 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Herson?
- About 1 in every 244,011 US boys born in 2025 was named Herson — 7 in all.
- Will my child share the name Herson with classmates?
- Herson will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Herson
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Vern#9714 · Abrahm#9714 · Sid#9714 · Hartwell#9714 · Kwan#9714 · Adrean#9714 · Chancey#9714 · Bob#9714
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Herson? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Herson and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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