Lisa

given name · English · Latin script

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

Lisa is a given name, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 32nd most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Fon (Togo/Benin): sun god and creator, in chameleon form; also Hebrew short form of Elizabeth.

rarermore common
  • ATAustria1 in 160◐
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 241
  • AUAustralia1 in 243

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

≈1.1M ●

across 12 countries

#136 ●

of 16M given names

9 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
600 ●

13M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 94 ◐

Finland

Spellings & scripts●

LisaLatin · English●13M records
ЛизаCyrillic · Russian●112K records
ᲚიზაGeorgian · Georgian●8.5K records
ליסהHebrew · Hebrew●6.9K records
리자Hangul · Korean●2.9K records
ลีซาThai · Thai●344 records
ΛίζαGreek · Greek●33 records
ԼիզաArmenian · Armenian●8 records
ልሳEthiopic · Amharic●0 records

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Liza in BD Bangladesh, PH Philippines, FI Finland and 2 more, Лиза in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan, Riza in TR Türkiye and Ლიზა in GE Georgia.

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●

Fon (Togo/Benin): sun god and creator, in chameleon form; also Hebrew short form of Elizabeth.

Sources 1

  • African Names

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Lisa is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#32863,63310M rec.1 in 385864KLisa600
GB United Kingdom#33859,047753K rec.—3Lisa321
AU Australia#28477,787348K rec.—46Lisa318
CA Canada#27287,745271K rec.—9Lisa259
DE Germany#104242,378220K rec.—2Lisa279
BD Bangladesh#231132,349375 rec.——Liza42
PH Philippines#138132,052123K rec.—22KLiza126
RU Russia#268130,823105K rec.—#236Лиза141
TR Türkiye#687121,917141K rec.——Riza70
AT Austria#26103,29617K rec.—26KLisa152
IT Italy#8793,85880K rec.—202Lisa188
FR France—69,925△165 rec.1 in 97070K—12

Roughly 864K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 385). 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●

  • English13M75%
  • 1.1M6%
  • German583K3%
  • Spanish547K3%
  • French523K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English12,887,35075%
1,068,8566%
German582,7973%
Spanish547,4643%
French522,9833%

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◐

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

  • Spanish given name1.3M records spelled Lisa32 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, Brazil, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Lisà, Lisã, Lísa, Lis'A, Lïsä

  • a separate given name1.2M records spelled Lisa6 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Lísa, Lisá, Līsa, Lisà, Lisă

  • Indonesian given name79K records spelled Lisa6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, Malaysia, China

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay, Malagasy

    Also written 'Lisa, Lisa', Lïsã

  • Chinese given name65K records spelled Lisa9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Taiwan, China

    Languages: Chinese, Burmese

    Also written Li-Sa, Lísa, Liså, Lįså, Lìsa

  • Finnish given name39K records spelled Lisa5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, United States, Hungary, United Kingdom

    Languages: Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian

    Also written Lisza, Lisà

  • a separate given name13K records spelled Lisa9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Norway, United Kingdom, Sweden

    Also written Lisà, Lîså, Lìså, L̶i̶s̶a̶, Lişa

84 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●

Lisa 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, Originally a pet form of Elizabeth, now an independent name.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • In Czech, from a short form of Elisa (see Delisa) or Luisa (feminine form of Luisi).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • Variant of Liza, influenced by French Lise and German Liese.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In Swedish, Lisa är ursprungligen en smekform till → Elisabeth. Kända namnbärare är sångerskan Lisa Nilsson (f. 1970) och författaren Liza Marklund (f. 1962). I den rikssvenska alma nackan 20 september och i den finlandssvenska 19 november.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In German, Czech lisa 'fence'

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

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●

020K40K60K80K19001950200060K · 1965

Show as table
Lisa in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1886–2025
Yearrecords
18866
18965
18997
19049
19055
19077
19109
19119
19127
191316
191412
191514
191611
191713
191814
191914
192017
192117
192215
192315
192423
192513
192631
192714
192812
192922
193032
193128
193240
193321
193432
193531
193647
193753
193879
193977
194089
194192
1942124
1943162
1944193
1945250
1946327
1947423
1948468
1949596
19501,175
19511,698
19522,842
19533,602
19545,913
19558,539
195611,012
195715,142
195820,202
195925,699
196033,693
196142,720
196246,069
196356,047
196454,270
196560,271
196656,918
196752,437
196849,534
196945,028
197038,967
197132,907
197227,543
197322,677
197419,778
197518,139
197617,346
197717,014
197817,033
197917,286
198015,664
198114,294
198212,637
198311,469
198410,238
19859,012
19867,907
19877,549
19887,267
19896,573
19905,347
19914,395
19923,781
19933,223
19942,564
19952,236
19961,864
19971,546
19981,364
19991,113
20001,088
2001908
2002830
2003811
2004710
2005619
2006609
2007525
2008510
2009420
2010396
2011396
2012398
2013354
2014378
2015374
2016346
2017309
2018308
2019277
2020243
2021248
2022290
2023317
2024264
2025256

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 122 years between 1886–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1400160018002000Lisa del Giocondo, b. 1479Queen Noor of Jordan, b. 1951Lisa Murkowski, b. 1957Rosanna Arquette, b. 1959Lisa Gerrard, b. 1961Lisa Kudrow, b. 1963Lisa Edelstein, b. 1966Lisa Bonet, b. 1967Lisa Ann, b. 1972Olivia Munn, b. 1980

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 127 sources across 68 countries.

Official registers attesting Lisa
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020864K#36
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)202470K#126
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—33K#127
AT AustriaStatistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024)202426K#71
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—22K#139
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)202020K—
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—17K#277
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—5.5K#128
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20255.3K—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—3.9K#733
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)20223.7K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—3.7K#3,388

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 1,654 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Lisa?
We estimate roughly 1.1 million people bear Lisa (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
In which country does Lisa have the most bearers?
We estimate about 864 thousand people bear Lisa in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled lisa.
Where is Lisa most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lisa is densest in Finland — about 1 in 94 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is Lisa compared with other names?
In the United States, Lisa is the 32nd most common given name of 3,122,706 given names recorded there.
Is Lisa a male or female name?
Lisa 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 Lisa mean?
Recorded meaning: Fon (Togo/Benin): sun god and creator, in chameleon form; also Hebrew short form of Elizabeth.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/lisa

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, “Lisa” — the 32nd most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Lisa parses inside a full name →