Berthold
Fewer than a hundred men in Poland carry it, and no boy has been given it in years: this is a name most Poles will never meet. It comes from Germanic roots meaning "bright ruler".
Berthold Pronunciation
What Berthold means
Where Berthold comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Berthold grew from two old Germanic roots. Beraht meant bright, and walt meant rule or power. Bound together they give the sense that Polish name lists record as światły władca, a bright ruler. The variant bertold keeps the same bones with a plainer spelling.
The name has a real face in history. Berthold von Regensburg was a Franciscan preacher who crossed the German lands in the 1200s and drew large crowds to his sermons. The form Bertolt later reached the twentieth century through the playwright Bertolt Brecht.
In Poland the name keeps its German colour and turns up rarely. Read from a school class register, Berthold sounds foreign to the ear around it. The meaning holds all the same: bright ruler.
How many people are named Berthold
1 in 292414 men in Poland is named Berthold. 73 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #4192 among male names.
Berthold as a middle name
Berthold is a first name for 73 men in Poland and a middle name for another 35, a 68/32 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 1379th, between Arun (35) and Blake (35).
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#1377 Arne35
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#1378 Arun35
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#1379 Berthold35
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#1380 Blake35
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#1381 Christos35