Linda
About 1,458,899 American babies have been named Linda since 1880, most of them around 1947. In 2025 it ranked 902nd. About 1.1 million Lindas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 72.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Linda boys named Linda
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,458,899
- Estimated living today
- 1.1 million
- Median age today
- 72
- Peak year
- 1947
- Best rank
- 1st
- Rank in 2025
- 902nd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,455,143 / 3,756
How old the living Lindas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,458,899 babies given the name since 1880, about 1.1 million are alive — 74 in every hundred. Roughly 7,500 of them are children and 821,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1953 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
Latinised short form of Germanic compound names ending in -lind, -linde (“tender, soft”) (English -inda), such as Sieglinde and Dietlinde, and earlier names such as Old High German Irmilinda and Old Dutch Frithelind, from Proto-Germanic *linþaz (“gentle, mild”), whence also Old English līþe (English lithe). Later misassociated with unrelated.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Lindas
- Linda B. Buck (born 1947)American biologist
- Linda Hamilton (born 1956)American actress
- Linda Ronstadt (born 1946)American singer
- Linda Lovelace (1949–2002)American pornographic actress
- Linda Hunt (born 1945)American actress
- Linda Blair (born 1959)American actress
- Linda Evangelista (born 1965)Canadian model
- Linda Cardellini (born 1975)American actress
People named Linda with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Linda is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Linda is most concentrated in West Virginia (1.5×), Vermont (1.4×), the District of Columbia (1.4×), Rhode Island (1.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1947
The most popular girls’ names the year Linda peaked:
Linda elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Linda | 31,340 | 55th |
| Italy girls | Linda | 16,763 | — |
| Norway girls | Linda | 15,577 | 1st |
| Ireland girls | Linda | 9,184 | 13th |
| New Zealand girls | Linda | 6,288 | 7th |
| Scotland girls | Linda | 2,516 | 32nd |
| Switzerland girls | Linda | 2,124 | 50th |
| Austria girls | Linda | 1,054 | 53rd |
| England and Wales girls | Linda | 775 | 638th |
| Sweden girls | Linda | 664 | 58th |
| Belgium girls | Linda | 391 | 374th |
| Poland girls | Linda | 271 birth registrations | 212th |
| Austria boys | Linda | 106 | 60th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Linda | 10 | 301st |
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.
Linda: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Linda | 1,773 | 0.142% | 47th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Linda | 202 | 0.046% | 115th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Linda | 145 | 0.222% | 21st |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Linda | 4 | 0.108% | 5th |
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, Linda is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.22% of children were given it – 139 of them.
Linda: rank by region
In 2024, Linda was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Linda | 654 | 7 |
In 2023, Linda was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano | Linda | 10 | 22 |
In 2025, Linda was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Małopolskie | Linda | 232 | 2 |
In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Linda appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (308th).
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.
Linda by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 186 | 111th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Linda 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Linda | 29,915 | 32,663 |
| Finland girls | Linda | 6,444 | 7,986 |
| the Netherlands boys | Linda | — | 144 |
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 Linda lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,605 women called Linda 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Linda | 288 | 0.280 | 368 |
| Málaga | Linda | 178 | 0.194 | 446 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Linda | 97 | 0.175 | 603 |
| Palmas, Las | Linda | 90 | 0.153 | 696 |
| Almería | Linda | 55 | 0.146 | 602 |
| Balears, Illes | Linda | 83 | 0.132 | 601 |
Listed in 32 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 20 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
Linda against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
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.