Anna

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Anna boys named Anna

By the numbers

Total US births

917,615

Estimated living today

439,000

Median age today

33

Peak year

1918

Best rank

10th

Rank in 2025

107th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

914,859 / 2,756

How old the living Annas are

born that year still alive today

Of the 917,615 babies given the name since 1880, about 439,000 are alive — 48 in every hundred. Roughly 83,000 of them are children and 79,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1992 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

From Latin Anna both directly and via numerous other languages, chiefly in reference to St Anne the apocryphal mother of Mary mother of Jesus but appearing in the Vulgate in reference to Anne the Prophetess, from Koine Greek Ἄννα in the New Testament, from Hebrew חַנָּה (“Hannah”), from חַנָּה (“grace, gracious, graced with child”).

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

Notable Annas

• Anna Netrebko (born 1971)Russian and Austrian operatic soprano
• Anna Politkovskaya (1958–2006)Russian journalist
• Anna Pavlova (1882–1931)Russian ballet dancer
• Anna Kournikova (born 1981)Russian tennis player and model
• Anna I of Russia (1693–1740)fourth Emperor of Russia from 1730 to 1740
• Anna Kendrick (born 1985)American actress
• Anna Magnani (1908–1973)Italian actress
• Anna Nicole Smith (1967–2007)American actress and television personality

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

Where Anna is most common

• PA86,009
• NY72,799
• CA44,039
• TX39,874
• OH35,712
• IL35,379
• NJ28,395
• KY25,085
• MI22,567
• MA21,246

Relative to how many babies each state records, Anna is most concentrated in Pennsylvania (2.1×), Kentucky (1.9×), West Virginia (1.6×), Rhode Island (1.5×).

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

Names of 1918

The most popular girls’ names the year Anna peaked:

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

All the names of 1918

Anna 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.

Anna: 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, Anna is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.58% of children were given it – 361 of them.

Anna: rank by region

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

In 2002, Anna was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Spain.

In 2024, Anna was among the 10 most common names in 8 regions of Italy. It has come first somewhere in 17 different years.

In 2025, Anna was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland.

In 2023, with the country taken in 5 parts rather than 21, Anna appears in the lists for Nord-est (10th).

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Anna appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (3rd), Province of Flemish Brabant (6th), Province of Antwerp (11th), Province of Limburg (11th), Province of East Flanders (14th), Province of Namur (18th), Province of Walloon Brabant (21st), Province of Liège (23rd), Brussels-Capital Region (25th), Province of Luxembourg (35th) and Province of Hainaut (40th).

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.

Anna by city

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

Anna 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.

Among boys in the Netherlands this is mostly a middle name: of the 12,613 who carry it, 31 go by it.

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 Anna lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 48,063 women called Anna 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 51 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 1 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

• Ann
• Annie
• Anne
• Annette
• Annabelle
• Annika
• Annmarie
• Annalise
• Annabella
• Annabel
• Annemarie
• Annamarie

Anna against another name

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

• Anna vs Ana
• Anna vs Ann
• Anna vs Annie
• Anna vs Anne
• Anna vs Annette
• Anna vs Annabelle

Compare Anna with a name of your own