Anita

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Anita boys named Anita

By the numbers

Total US births

215,849

Estimated living today

139,000

Median age today

64

Peak year

1957

Best rank

81st

Rank in 2025

1,341st

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

215,165 / 684

How old the living Anitas are

born that year still alive today

Of the 215,849 babies given the name since 1880, about 139,000 are alive — 64 in every hundred. Roughly 3,000 of them are children and 68,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1961 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 Spanish

From Spanish Anita, diminutive of Ana (“Ann”).

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

Notable Anitas

• Anita Ekberg (1931–2015)Swedish actress
• Anita Desai (born 1937)Indian novelist, University professor
• Anita Włodarczyk (born 1985)Polish hammer thrower
• Anita Brookner (1928–2016)English novelist and art historian
• Anita Loos (1888–1981)American screenwriter, playwright, author, actress and television producer
• Anita Borg (1949–2003)American computer scientist
• Anita Baker (born 1958)American singer
• Anita Mui (1963–2003)Hong Kong singer and actress

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

Where Anita is most common

• CA18,245
• NY17,996
• TX17,734
• IL11,398
• PA10,755
• OH10,343
• MI6,987
• IN6,257
• NC5,919
• TN5,340

Relative to how many babies each state records, Anita is most concentrated in New Mexico (1.9×), Maine (1.8×), the District of Columbia (1.6×), Kansas (1.5×).

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

Names of 1957

The most popular girls’ names the year Anita peaked:

• Mary
• Susan
• Linda
• Debra
• Karen
• Deborah

All the names of 1957

Anita 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.

Anita: 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, Anita is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.11% of children were given it – 67 of them.

Anita: rank by region

In 2014, Anita was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

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

In 2025, Anita was given 2 times or more in 13 regions of Poland.

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.

Anita by city

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

Anita 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 – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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 Anita lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 2,178 women called Anita 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 48 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 4 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Aniyah
• Aniya
• Anika
• Anissa
• Anisa
• Anisha
• Anitra
• Anibal
• Ania
• Aniah
• Ani
• Anish

Anita against another name

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

• Anita vs Aniyah
• Anita vs Aniya
• Anita vs Anika
• Anita vs Anissa
• Anita vs Anisa
• Anita vs Anisha

Compare Anita with a name of your own