Alma

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Alma boys named Alma

By the numbers

Total US births

165,942

Estimated living today

55,000

Median age today

52

Peak year

1918

Best rank

73rd

Rank in 2025

449th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

163,723 / 2,219

How old the living Almas are

born that year still alive today

Of the 165,942 babies given the name since 1880, about 55,000 are alive — 33 in every hundred. Roughly 8,500 of them are children and 21,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1973 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Latin

Usually explained as Latin alma (“nourishing, kind”). It has also been used as a short form of Germanic compound names beginning with the element Amal-, as in Amelia.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Almas

• Alma Mahler (1879–1964)Austrian composer, art collector, author, editor, and socialite
• Alma Deutscher (born 2005)British composer, pianist and violinist
• Alma (born 1988)French singer
• Alma Karlin (1889–1950)Slovenian academic and poet
• Alma Reville (1899–1982)English film editor and screenwriter
• Alma Zadić (born 1984)Austrian lawyer and politician
• Alma (born 1996)Finnish singer-songwriter
• Alma Cogan (1932–1966)British pop singer

People named Alma with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Alma is most common

• TX16,227
• CA13,242
• NC6,182
• PA6,101
• NY5,523
• KY5,420
• GA5,199
• TN4,868
• IL4,811
• OH4,338

Relative to how many babies each state records, Alma is most concentrated in Kentucky (2.4×), Arkansas (2.3×), Mississippi (2.2×), West Virginia (2.1×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1918

The most popular girls’ names the year Alma peaked:

• Mary
• Helen
• Dorothy
• Margaret
• Ruth
• Mildred

All the names of 1918

Alma elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Alma: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Alma is most concentrated in Basel-Stadt, where 0.20% of children were given it – 74 of them.

Alma: rank by region

In 2025, Alma was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.

In 2024, Alma was among the 10 most common names in 4 regions of Spain.

In 2024, Alma was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Alma was given 2 times or more in 2 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Alma appears in the lists for Province of Hainaut (15th), Brussels-Capital Region (17th), Province of Liège (27th), Province of Walloon Brabant (42nd), Province of Namur (50th), Province of East Flanders (98th), Province of Flemish Brabant (128th), Province of Antwerp (160th) and Province of West Flanders (160th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Alma by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Alma among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Alma lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 21,802 women called Alma were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Almeda
• Almeta
• Almira
• Almon
• Almer
• Almond
• Almedia

Alma against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Alma vs Almeda
• Alma vs Almeta
• Alma vs Almira
• Alma vs Almon
• Alma vs Almer
• Alma vs Almond

Compare Alma with a name of your own