Irma
About 74,021 American babies have been named Irma since 1880, most of them around 1920. In 2025 it ranked 3,167th. About 32,000 Irmas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 64.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Irma boys named Irma
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 74,021
- Estimated living today
- 32,000
- Median age today
- 64
- Peak year
- 1920
- Best rank
- 164th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,167th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 73,769 / 252
How old the living Irmas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 74,021 babies given the name since 1880, about 32,000 are alive — 43 in every hundred. Roughly 1,200 of them are children and 15,000 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 Germanic languages
From German Irma in the nineteenth century. Short form of Germanic names beginning with irm(en)-, erm(en) "whole, entire", from Proto-Germanic *ermunaz. Cognate with English Emma.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Irmas
- Irma Grese (1923–1945)German concentration camp guard
- Irmã Dulce Pontes (1914–1992)Brazilian Catholic Franciscan Sister
- Irma Thomas (born 1941)American soul and rhythm and blues singer
- Irma Testa (born 1997)Italian boxer
- Irma Serrano (1933–2023)Mexican singer, actress, politician, theatre entrepreneur and author
- Irma Stern (1894–1966)South African artist
- Irma Johansson (born 1932)Swedish cross-country skier
- Irma Heijting-Schuhmacher (1925–2014)swimmer
People named Irma with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Irma is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Irma is most concentrated in Texas (3.0×), Louisiana (2.9×), Mississippi (2.0×), Arkansas (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1920
The most popular girls’ names the year Irma peaked:
Irma elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Irma | 13,110 | 87th |
| Italy girls | Irma | 597 | — |
| Norway girls | Irma | 320 | 263rd |
| Sweden girls | Irma | 232 | 94th |
| Switzerland girls | Irma | 144 | 736th |
| France boys | Irma | 45 | 1,245th |
| Poland girls | Irma | 28 birth registrations | 417th |
| Belgium girls | Irma | 20 | 1,234th |
| England and Wales girls | Irma | 13 | 3,725th |
| Ireland girls | Irma | 4 | 449th |
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.
Irma: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Irma | 111 | 0.009% | 544th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Irma | 23 | 0.005% | 517th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Irma | 10 | 0.015% | 87th |
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, Irma is most concentrated in Bern, where 0.01% of children were given it – 29 of them.
Irma by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 10 | 425th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Irma 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.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Irma | 8,611 | 9,661 |
| the Netherlands girls | Irma | 7,209 | 9,237 |
| the Netherlands boys | Irma | — | 275 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026, the Netherlands on 1 January 2018 – 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 Irma lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 2,266 women called Irma 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
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asturias | Irma | 154 | 0.290 | 391 |
| Coruña, A | Irma | 108 | 0.183 | 478 |
| Girona | Irma | 63 | 0.152 | 584 |
| Barcelona | Irma | 441 | 0.145 | 553 |
| Bizkaia | Irma | 84 | 0.139 | 639 |
| Gipuzkoa | Irma | 50 | 0.133 | 648 |
Listed in 42 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 10 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.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.