From Old English/Germanic 'heard' meaning 'hardy, brave, strong'; a surname turned given name.
Harding derives from the Old English personal name "Heard," meaning bold, brave, or hard in the sense of strong and resolute, combined with the suffix "-ing" denoting descent or association — so at its core, Harding means "son of the hardy one" or "people of Heard." It entered the English surname tradition during the Norman era and gradually made the familiar journey from family name to given name that so many English surnames have traveled. The name's most prominent American bearer was Warren G.
Harding, the 29th President of the United States, who served from 1921 until his death in 1923. Though his administration was later clouded by the Teapot Dome scandal, Harding was enormously popular in his lifetime, elected by one of the largest popular-vote margins in American history on a promise of a "return to normalcy" after World War I. Chester Harding, the early nineteenth-century American portrait painter who famously captured Daniel Boone's likeness near the end of the frontiersman's life, gave the name a distinguished artistic lineage as well.
As a given name, Harding carries the particular gravity of names with deep Anglo-Saxon roots — solid, unadorned, and quietly assertive. It belongs to the same family of surname-names as Grant, Hayes, or Pierce, and appeals to parents drawn to presidential or historically resonant choices. Its relative rarity as a first name gives it distinction without obscurity.