Gerda (Gerðr) comes from the Old Norse garðr, meaning "enclosure" or "stronghold." In Norse mythology, Gerda is the beautiful giantess loved by the god Freyr — said to be so radiant her arms lit up the sea and sky.
Gerda is the heroine of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen (1844) — who travels through the seasons to rescue her friend Kay.
Gerda 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 Gerda reduce to 8, The Visionary. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.