Bernadine is the feminine of Bernard — from the Old Germanic bern ("bear") + hard ("brave, strong") — "brave as a bear." A top-200 US baby name from 1910 to 1945. Bernadine "Bernie" Harris — central character of Terry McMillan's bestselling novel Waiting to Exhale (1992) and the 1995 film adaptation directed by Forest Whitaker, where she was played by Angela Bassett; Bernadine's scene burning her unfaithful husband's car and possessions became one of the most-iconic moments in 1990s American cinema and a cultural touchstone for women's empowerment. Bernardine Dohran (born 1942) — American activist; leader of the Weather Underground (1969-1980); later a clinical law professor at Northwestern University. Bernardine Evaristo (born 1959) — British author; her novel Girl, Woman, Other (2019) won the Booker Prize — making her the first Black woman and first Black British person ever to win the Booker (shared with Margaret Atwood). Saint Bernardino of Siena is the male form. Bernadine Healy (1944-2011) — first woman director of the US National Institutes of Health (1991-1993). Bernardine is also a variant spelling.
Featured throughout 20th-century literature and African American culture.
Bernadine does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Bernadine reduce to 9, The Giver. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.