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Brunhilda

Fewer than 80 Polish women carry it, and no girl has been given the name at any point this century. Germanic at root, built from the words for armor and battle.

Brunhilda Pronunciation

Brunhilda is pronounced broon-KHEEL-dah (/brunˈxilda/).

Alive in 2025
79
National rank
#3995

What Brunhilda means

Where Brunhilda comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.

Brunhilda comes from Germanic roots. The first part, brun, meant a coat of mail, the armor a fighter wore. The second, hild, meant battle. Put them together and the name reads as armor and battle, two hard things bound into one word.

The most famous bearer is Brünhild of the Nibelungenlied, the German epic written down around 1200. She is a warrior queen of enormous strength, and she keeps that strength until a man tricks her out of it. The name reached history too. Brunhilda of Austrasia, a Frankish queen who died in 613, ruled and fought for decades before her enemies killed her.

German usage kept the name close to that fierce sense. It never softened into a pet form. There are no common diminutives, no cross-gender variant.

In a Polish class register the name looks foreign, and it is. A teacher reading it aloud slows down. Brunhilda stays uncommon in Poland, worn by few, spelled the long way every time. What it means has not drifted far from where it began: zbroja i bitwa, armor and battle.

How many people are named Brunhilda

1 in 285365 women in Poland is named Brunhilda. 79 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3995 among female names.

People with the name Brunhilda 2019 → 2025
79 -12 since 2019
2020 89 -2
2021 89 0
2022 86 -3
2023 85 -1
2024 82 -3
2025 79 -3

Brunhilda as a middle name

Brunhilda is a first name for 79 women in Poland and a middle name for another 36, a 69/31 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1153rd, between Antonella (36) and Christel (36).

As a first name
79
As a middle name
36
first name 69% middle name 31%

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