Pollyanna
About 1,129 American babies have been named Pollyanna since 1914, most of them around 1964. In 2025 it ranked 6,116th. About 770 Pollyannas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 52.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Pollyanna
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,129
- Estimated living today
- 770
- Median age today
- 52
- Peak year
- 1964
- Best rank
- 1,559th
- Rank in 2025
- 6,116th
- First recorded
- 1914
How old the living Pollyannas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,129 babies given the name since 1914, about 770 are alive — 68 in every hundred. 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 Hebrew
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Pollyannas
- Pollyanna McIntosh (born 1979)Scottish-born actress
People named Pollyanna with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Pollyanna is most common
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1964
The most popular girls’ names the year Pollyanna peaked:
Pollyanna elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Pollyanna | 639 | 825th |
| France girls | Pollyanna | 45 | 1,414th |
| Poland girls | Pollyanna | 5 birth registrations | 569th |
| Scotland girls | Pollyanna | 3 | 640th |
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.
Related names
Pollyanna 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.