Harald
Meaning
army ruler; famously borne by King Harald V of Norway; famously borne by Harald Fairhair, Norway's first king
The story
Harald is Old Norse at its most direct: herr, an army, and valdr, a ruler, fused into a name for the man who commands. The sagas give it first to Harald Fairhair, remembered as the king who unified Norway more than a thousand years ago, supposedly after vowing not to cut his hair until the work was done. Norway still has a Harald on the throne today: King Harald V, who has reigned since 1991 and who sailed for his country in three Olympic Games before wearing the crown. For all that royal weight, the name has barely touched American records, registering only a faint flicker in the 2020s. That makes Harald a genuinely rare pick on this side of the Atlantic: a thousand years of kings behind it, and the name still arrives practically unclaimed.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Harald has stayed rare in US records the whole time: no peak decade to name.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
152 people · the #30,809 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 1,000,000 · median age 60
Among people named Harald living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1960s than in any other decade.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Harald deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Harald truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Harald fits with your family’s names and surname.
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