Gertrude is from the Old Germanic gar (spear) + thrudh (strength). **A top-25 US baby name from 1880 to 1916**. **Saint Gertrude the Great (1256-c. 1302)** — German Benedictine nun and Christian mystic; **the first person to receive the Sacred Heart devotion in a vision (1281)**; one of only four women called "the Great" in Catholic history. **Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)** — American expatriate writer; her Paris salon at 27 rue de Fleurus hosted Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald; **"A rose is a rose is a rose" (*Sacred Emily*, 1913)** is among the most-quoted lines in modernist poetry. **Gertrude Ederle (1905-2003)** — first woman to swim the English Channel (1926) — and she did it 2+ hours faster than any of the five men who had done it before. **Gertrude — Queen of Denmark, Hamlet's mother**.
Subject of countless Stein biographies and Tim Dahl's *Trudy's Big Swim* (2017).
Gertrude reduces to eight — the number of spear strength.