Etta

given name · Latin script

Meaning: Short form of the various names such as Rosetta and Henrietta ending in this element, originally an Italian feminine diminutive suffix

A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 30 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025

Pronunciation:Explore pronunciation →

Etta is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

  • JMJamaica≈1 in 14Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
  • IEIreland≈1 in 17Kfew records
  • SGSingapore≈1 in 19Kfew records

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

10,485 people, 2020

Record sources
326 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)

Jamaica, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

Short form of the various names such as Rosetta and Henrietta ending in this element, originally an Italian feminine diminutive suffix.

Cited for this meaning 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.

Often considered alongside

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Etta, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.

From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.

Where in the world

(measured from records)

Etta counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Etta is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—10,4851 in 32K10KEtta326
NG Nigeria—≈4,300 est.≈1 in 54KlistedEtta42
GB United Kingdom—≈2,800 est.≈1 in 25K5Etta88
CA Canada—≈1,400 est.≈1 in 30K6Etta60
DE Germany—≈900 est.≈1 in 93K1Etta62
SG Singapore—≈310 est.≈1 in 19K—Etta7
IE Ireland#648≈310 est.≈1 in 17K—Etta6
JM Jamaica#249≈200 est.≈1 in 14K—Etta4

10,485 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; the de-duesseldorf-vornamen register; the wgnd-ng-names register. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Etta is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, Colombia, Italy

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Ettã, Èttà

  • French given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Cameroon, Canada

    Also written Étta

  • Greek given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States

    Also written Εττα

53 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses

(measured from records)

Etta is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Pet form abstracted from HENRIETTA, etc.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In English, A short form of Henrietta or of other female given names ending in -etta.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • English and Scottish: short form of the various names ending in this element (originally an Italian feminine diminutive suffix), now sometimes used as an independent given name. In Gaelic Scotland it is used as a pet form of MAIREAD (Anglicized as Mar(i)etta ).

    as a word

  • In Swedish, one; the digit or figure "1".

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In crp-rsn, this

    as a wordkaikki.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)
1880190019201940Etta McDaniel, b. 1890Etta Baker, b. 1913Etta Jones, b. 1928
  • Etta McDanielb. 1890USAmerican actress (1890-1946)
  • Etta Bakerb. 1913USAmerican Piedmont blues guitarist and singer
  • Etta Jonesb. 1928USAmerican jazz singer (1928–2001)

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).

How to address them

(machine-generated)
InformalHi Etta,

A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.

Evidence

(measured from records)

56 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 30 countries.

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

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Etta mean, and where does it come from?
Short form of the various names such as Rosetta and Henrietta ending in this element, originally an Italian feminine diminutive suffix. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
What are other forms of the name Etta?
In the etymology graph, Hattie, Henrietta and Hallie are forms of the same name in other languages.
Which countries have the most people named Etta?
In the United States, the national register counted about 10 thousand people named Etta, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled etta. After it come Nigeria, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany; the country table on this page ranks them.
Is Etta a male or female name?
Etta is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: United States (Census Bureau, 2020), Finland (DVV) and Netherlands (Meertens NVB).
How common is the name Etta?
In the United States, the national register counted 10,485 people named Etta in 2020, about 1 in 32 thousand residents.
How common is Etta compared with other names?
In Jamaica, Etta is the 249th most common given name of 21,568 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Etta?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/etta

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Etta” — the 249th most common given name in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Etta parses inside a full name →