The Chinese character 贺 / 賀 means "celebrate" or "congratulate."
[1] It is the 70th name on the Hundred Family Surnames poem.
[2] The surname originated as a semantic variant of Qing (庆), which can be traced back to Qing Feng (庆封), the great-grandson of Duke Huan of Qi.
In the Eastern Han dynasty, a well-known official and descendant of the Qing family, Qing Chun (庆纯), changed his surname to He, which has the same meaning as Qing, because his surname Qing happened to be the given name of Liu Qing (刘庆), the father of the Emperor An of Han, in order to avoid a naming taboo.
[3] Another origin was a shortened form of disyllabic surnames such as He Lan (贺兰), He Lai (贺赖), He Dun (贺敦), which were from the Xianbei ethnic group, shortened to He through cultural fusion with the Han people during Northern and Southern dynasties.