Geraldine
Only 86 women in Poland carry it, and not one girl has been given it since 2000. A Germanic name at root, from words for "spear" and "ruler".
Geraldine Pronunciation
Geraldine is pronounced ge-rahl-DEE-ne (/gɛralˈdinɛ/).
What Geraldine means
Where Geraldine comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Geraldine reaches back to Germanic words. `Ger` meant a spear, and `wald` meant to rule. Put together they give the sense the dictionaries still record, spear ruler, or in Polish władająca włócznią. The name arrived as a feminine partner to Gerald.
Its English colour comes from a poet. In the 1540s Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, wrote a cycle of sonnets to "the fair Geraldine," a courtly name he coined for the young Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald. Those verses lifted a Latin-flavoured invention into an English given name and lent it a dignified, drawing-room tone it kept.
Under that polish stays the plainer picture, a woman who governs with a spear. Geraldine took no common Polish diminutives, so it stands on any register in full. Read a class list in a Polish school and it arrives with no nickname to soften it, four syllables that still mean spear ruler.
How many people are named Geraldine
1 in 262138 women in Poland is named Geraldine. 86 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3795 among female names.
Geraldine as a middle name
Geraldine is a first name for 86 women in Poland and a middle name for another 31, a 74/26 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1257th, between Gail (31) and Holly (31).
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#1255 Florencja31
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#1256 Gail31
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#1257 Geraldine31
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#1258 Holly31
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#1259 Iman31