Italian form of Jerome, from Greek Hieronymos meaning 'sacred name.'
Geronimo derives from the Italian and Spanish rendering of Hieronymus, itself from the Greek "Hieronymos," composed of "hieros" (sacred or holy) and "onyma" (name) — meaning, essentially, "one who bears a sacred name." Saint Jerome, the 4th-century scholar who translated the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate), carried this name in its Latin form, and Spanish missionaries spreading Christianity through the Americas naturally brought the Italianate variant with them. It was under these missionaries that the name was given to Goyaałé, a Bedonkohe Apache leader born around 1829.
Goyaałé — who became known to history as Geronimo — transformed the name into something far larger than its ecclesiastical origins. S. Army in 1886.
His legend grew so enormous that American paratroopers in World War II began shouting "Geronimo!" as they leapt from aircraft, a practice that spread into popular culture as a universal exclamation of daring courage. The name today carries extraordinary duality: scholarly sanctity on one side and raw defiance on the other.
It is uncommon enough to feel distinctive, yet embedded deeply enough in collective memory to need no explanation. For a child named Geronimo, the implicit inheritance is boldness — a name that has never been small.