Donna

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Donna is a given name, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 61st most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Of recent origin (not found before the 1920s).

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 397◐
  • NZNew Zealand1 in 435
  • CACanada1 in 447

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈685K ●

across 8 countries

#283 ●

of 16M given names

5 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
555 ●

8.5M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 365 ◐

Ecuador

Spellings & scripts●

DonnaLatin · English●7.9M records
דונהHebrew · Hebrew●5.8K records
ดอนาThai · Thai●224 records
ᲓონაGeorgian · Georgian●98 records
도나Hangul · Korean●33 records

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Dona in BR Brazil, IN India, PE Peru and 1 more, Doña in AR Argentina, ES Spain and דונה in IL Israel.

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

Meaning & origin●

Of recent origin (not found before the 1920s). It is derived from the Italian vocabulary word donna ‘lady’ (compare Madonna), but it is now also used as a feminine form of Donald.

Sources 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Donna is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#61634,5026.9M rec.1 in 524635KDonna555
GB United Kingdom#64521,329502K rec.—3Donna240
AU Australia#89243,570190K rec.—103Donna249
CA Canada#57186,050184K rec.—1Donna223
PH Philippines#28473,78567K rec.——Donna139
IT Italy#17155,46057K rec.—2Donna64
EC Ecuador—46,271△591 rec.1 in 36546K—16
DE Germany#50931,92232K rec.—1Donna113
SG Singapore#1320,56321K rec.——Donna62
RU Russia#96419,99121K rec.——Donna36
NZ New Zealand#2919,67919K rec.—11Donna120
IE Ireland#6619,44920K rec.—listedDonna115

Roughly 635K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 524). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

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

Languages●

  • English7.9M87%
  • Spanish264K3%
  • German75K1%
  • 74K1%
  • French65K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English7,876,49987%
Spanish263,9463%
German75,0381%
73,8991%
French64,6761%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Donna is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name478K records spelled Donna10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, Brazil, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written D'Onna, Donnà, Dönna, Donná

  • Polish given name44K records spelled Donna67 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, Czechia, Bulgaria

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Czech

    Also written Dona, Дона, Dawna, Донна, Doña

  • Indonesian given name26K records spelled Donna3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Indonesia, Philippines, United Kingdom

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Dońna

  • Greek given name19K records spelled Donna5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States, United Kingdom, Canada

    Also written Ntona, Ντόνα, Ντονα, Ντονά

  • Thai given name10K records spelled Donna14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Thailand, United Kingdom, Philippines

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written Deanna, ดอนน่า, ดอนนา, Donlana, ดลณา

  • Turkish given name6.4K records spelled Donna8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Türkiye, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: Turkish, Uzbek, Azerbaijani

    Also written Dönnä, Döññå

58 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●

Donna 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.

  • In English, A lady, especially a noblewoman; the title given to a lady in Italy.

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

  • In Italian, do latim domina, 'senhora', reduzido no latim medieval a domna

    as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

  • In French, It. donna « dame, femme »; used as a female given name.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

  • In English, A lady; short form of Madonna.

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • In Italian, Variante di Donno

    as a nameDizionario dei cognomi italiani

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.

Over time●

010K20K30K40K19001950200036K · 1959

Show as table
Donna in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
188017
188115
188219
188321
188422
188526
188629
188738
188837
188941
189033
189137
189243
189342
189444
189544
189640
189753
189852
189952
190079
190153
190255
190378
190461
190559
190684
1907100
190898
1909123
1910107
1911149
1912227
1913266
1914283
1915483
1916606
1917652
1918746
1919774
1920959
19211,111
19221,349
19231,578
19242,125
19252,429
19263,008
19273,992
19284,470
19295,139
19305,978
19316,600
19327,362
19337,360
19347,870
19357,793
19367,932
19378,887
19389,693
19399,371
19409,232
194110,446
194212,987
194314,912
194415,173
194515,397
194619,770
194723,517
194822,033
194922,056
195021,629
195124,074
195223,718
195324,227
195427,429
195527,940
195629,852
195728,042
195826,959
195936,468
196034,138
196128,679
196225,719
196325,405
196423,808
196519,700
196617,037
196714,787
196812,748
196911,447
19709,968
19718,013
19726,257
19735,058
19744,354
19753,422
19763,032
19772,581
19782,459
19792,198
19802,009
19811,700
19821,530
19831,378
19841,181
19851,191
1986992
19871,031
19881,040
1989992
1990861
1991739
1992679
1993581
1994662
1995492
1996420
1997422
1998433
1999373
2000370
2001355
2002376
2003323
2004331
2005305
2006325
2007261
2008278
2009262
2010258
2011199
2012188
2013176
2014163
2015160
2016118
2017124
2018139
2019116
2020137
2021105
2022101
202399
2024103
202598

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 146 years between 1880–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1920194019601980Donna Reed, b. 1921Donna Mills, b. 1940Donna Haraway, b. 1944Donna Karan, b. 1948Donna Summer, b. 1948Donna Pescow, b. 1954Paige O'Hara, b. 1956Donna Strickland, b. 1959Donna Murphy, b. 1959Donna Tartt, b. 1963

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●

Attested in 98 sources across 51 countries.

Official registers attesting Donna
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020635K#63
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—2.2K#1,306
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 202520251.1K#46
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020786#31,542
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000634#33,876
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010618#36,246
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2020600#2,741
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020563#63
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—352#3,514
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—246#4,120
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020206—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—179#3,725

Reference works 5

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • 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 2026-09-12 data build · 967 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Donna?
We estimate roughly 685 thousand people bear Donna (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
In which country does Donna have the most bearers?
We estimate about 635 thousand people bear Donna in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled donna.
Where is Donna most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Donna is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 365 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is Donna compared with other names?
In the United States, Donna is the 61st most common given name of 3,122,706 given names recorded there.
Is Donna a male or female name?
Donna 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 does the name Donna mean?
Recorded meaning: Of recent origin (not found before the 1920s).
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/donna

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

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, “Donna” — the 61st most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Donna parses inside a full name →