Lemma

Spellings & scripts●(measured from records)

Locally spelled Lema in EC Ecuador, ES Spain, US United States and ለማ in ET Ethiopia.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●(measured from records)

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Lemma is read●(measured from records)

Lemma is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

• English45%

  Old English personal name; surviving in Lemm

  as a name·A Dictionary of English Surnames

  A proposition proved or accepted for immediate use in the proof of some other proposition.

  as a word·kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

• Spanish17%

  No dictionary in our sources glosses Lemma in Spanish.

• Amharic13%

  No dictionary in our sources glosses Lemma in Amharic.

• Italian6.3%

  from the personal name Lemma, feminine equivalent of Lemmo, from Guglielma.

  as a name·Dictionary of American Family Names

  forma fem. de Lemma.

  as a name·Dicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Other recorded senses●(measured from records)

Lemma is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

• In Latin, A subject for consideration or explanation, a theme, matter, subject, contents.

  as a word·kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

• In Swedish, lemma (the canonical form of an inflected word, a headword in a dictionary)

  as a word·kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name●(measured from records)

• Alessandra Lemmab. 1965GBBritish psychologist and psychoanalyst
• Walter Lemmab. 1973ARassociation football player
• Sisay Lemmab. 1990ETEthiopian athletics competitor
• Meskerem Lewab. 2003ETnot in their usual nameEthiopian athletics competitor
• Patrizia Lemmaresearcher

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●(measured from records)

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Lemma mean, and where does it come from?

Old English personal name; surviving in Lemm Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.

In which country does Lemma have the most bearers?

Mondonomo estimates about 88 thousand people named Lemma in Ethiopia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ለማ.

How common is the name Lemma?

In Sweden, the national register counted 41 people named Lemma, about 1 in 249 thousand residents.

How common is Lemma compared with other names?

In Ethiopia, Lemma is the 10th most common surname of 22,571 surnames recorded there.