Given name & surname
Sherlock
“a fair-haired man”
Sherlock is used as a given name and a surname. One English interpretation is “a fair-haired man.”
Meaning & origin
What it means
One English interpretation is “a fair-haired man.”
Where it comes from
An origin associated with this spelling is English.
The story
Published U.S. birth records include this spelling as early as 1930. This is the earliest published observation available here, rather than a date for the name’s origin.
From dated birth records
Sherlock through the years
- Babies since 1880
- 78
- 78 boys · 0 girls
- Most popular year
- 2017
- 12 babies
- 2025
- 0
- Outside the ranked list
- 2021–25 vs 2016–20
- −81%
- Cooling
By the numbers
The most recent published U.S. birth count for boys is 5 in 2022. Later missing counts do not mean the name went unused. Its largest published annual count for boys was 12 in 2017. Published U.S. population figures for this spelling include 273 as a first name in 2020; 4,616 as a surname in 2020.
From Social Security birth records and U.S. Census name counts for this exact spelling. Other spellings are counted separately.
Sherlock’s family of names
Sherlock has a related form in Sherlocke. Sherlock has a related form in Shurlock. Sherlock has a related form in Shurlocke.
Inner ring: nicknames and forms · outer: across languages.
Nicknames & forms 3
Diminutives, pet forms, short forms and variants used alongside the name.
Across languages 2
Equivalents and cognates in other languages, plus older forms it grew from.
People named Sherlock
Characters named Sherlock: Sherlock Holmes (fictional character (consulting detective) created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).
Listed by how widely each person is written about, which says nothing about the name itself.
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