Viola
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Any of several flowering plants, of the genus Viola, including the violets and pansies
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/vaɪələ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Viola is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Jamaica it is the 89th most common given name.
- SESweden1 in 219(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 4.1K
- ITItaly≈1 in 4.4K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 359 (measured from records)
- 1 in 219 (inferred from the name graph)
≈250,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Any of several flowering plants, of the genus Viola, including the violets and pansies.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
How Viola is read(measured from records)
Viola is one spelling over 3 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.
- English72%
Any of several flowering plants, of the genus Viola, including the violets and pansies.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German6.4%
synonym of Bratsche
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish5.0%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Viola in Spanish.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Viola 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈250,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | — | Viola | 24 |
| SE Sweden | #314 | 46,582 | 1 in 219 | 47K | Viola | 60 |
| US United States | #749 | 24,135 | 1 in 14K | 24K | Viola | 359 |
| DE Germany | #545 | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | Viola | 186 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.4K | 1.2K | Viola | 81 |
| FI Finland | — | 7,969 | 1 in 699 | 12K | Viola | 13 |
| DK Denmark | #752 | 2,466 | 1 in 2.4K | 2.5K | Viola | 48 |
| JM Jamaica | #89 | ≈630 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | — | Viola | 5 |
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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Viola is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Italian, lat. viola «viola, fiore»; nome di santa venerata a Verona, talora usato tra gli Israeliti.
as a nameDizionario Dei Nomi e Cognomi Italiani
In Swedish, Viola är ett latinskt namn, identiskt med växtbeteckningen viola ’viol’. En känd litterär gestalt är Viola i William Shakespeares Trettondagsafton (ca 1601). I den rikssvenska almanackan 29 oktober och i den finlandssvenska 3 juni.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In Italian, Nome di una Santa, venerata a Verona, 3 maggio. Più in uso tra gli Israeliti (forse traduzione di qualche nome ebraico) che tra i Cristiani. Cogn. Viola. Violini. Forse vi concorrono Vito (ve- neto Vio)e Guido.
as a nameNomi e Cognomi: Saggio di ricerche etimologiche e storiche
In Italian, do nome medieval Viola; pode ser matronímico ou ligado à flor ou ao instrumento musical
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
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)
- Viola Lawrenceb. 1894USAmerican film editor (1894-1973)
- Viola Danab. 1897USactress (1897-1987)
- Viola Desmondb. 1914CACanadian activist (1914-1965)
- Viola Liuzzob. 1925USAmerican activist and murder victim (1925–1965)
- Viola Harrisb. 1926USAmerican actress (1926–2017)
- Sonja Edströmb. 1930SEnot in their usual nameSwedish cross-country skier
- Viola Amherdb. 1962CHSwiss politician
- Viola Davisb. 1965USAmerican actress and producer (born 1965)
- Viola Bauerb. 1976DEGerman cross-country skier
- Lynn Collinsb. 1977USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
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)
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)
Attested in 106 sources across 52 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.6K | #5,271 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.4K | #5,064 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.2K | #5,392 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 26 | #40,026 |
Reference works 8
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Viola mean, and where does it come from?
- Any of several flowering plants, of the genus Viola, including the violets and pansies. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Viola?
- A machine transcription gives /vaɪələ/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Viola a male or female name?
- Viola is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Viola?
- In the etymology graph, Violeta, Violet and Vi are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Viola have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 252 thousand people named Viola in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled viola.
- Where is Viola most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Viola is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 219 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Viola?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 46,582 people named Viola, about 1 in 219 residents.
- How common is Viola compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Viola is the 89th most common given name of 21,568 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Viola?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/violaThe 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, “Viola” — the 89th most common given name in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.