Ritva
given name · Finnish · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Ritva is a given name, with more bearers in Finland than in any other country, where it is the 81st most common given name. It appears chiefly in Finnish and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: a slender, hanging branch, as of a birch or a willow.
- FIFinland1 in 202◐
- USUnited States1 in 2.3M
- SESweden1 in 5.5K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈30K ●
- Sources
- 66 ●
- 1 in 202 ◐
across 8 countries
5.9K records
Official registry-verified
Finland
Meaning & origin●
a slender, hanging branch, as of a birch or a willow.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Finland | #81 | 27,545△ | 3.3K rec. | 1 in 202 | 42K | Ritva | 66 |
| SE Sweden | — | 1,846△ | 441 rec. | 1 in 5.5K | 1.8K | Ritva | 33 |
| DE Germany | — | 263 | 246 rec. | — | — | Ritva | 36 |
| US United States | — | 143 | 1.3K rec. | 1 in 2.3M | 143 | Ritva | 55 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 132 | 117 rec. | — | — | Ritva | 20 |
| NO Norway | — | 127 | 17 rec. | — | 102 | Ritva | 8 |
| AU Australia | — | 99 | 91 rec. | — | — | Ritva | 26 |
| FR France | — | 59 | 39 rec. | — | — | Ritva | 24 |
| CA Canada | — | 46 | 41 rec. | — | — | Ritva | 11 |
| DK Denmark | — | 44△ | 12 rec. | 1 in 133K | 44 | Ritva | 11 |
| ES Spain | — | 35 | 32 rec. | — | — | Ritva | 11 |
| BR Brazil | — | 35 | 7 rec. | — | — | Ritva | 14 |
Roughly 28K people in Finland bear this name (about 1 in 202). 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●
- Finnish157K96%
- English1.9K1%
- Chinese1.2K1%
- Portuguese5501%
- German5391%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Finnish | 157,293 | 96% |
| English | 1,891 | 1% |
| Chinese | 1,157 | 1% |
| Portuguese | 550 | 1% |
| German | 539 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Ritva is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, Ritva är ett finskt namn med litterärt ursprung. I dikten Rantakoivu (1898; Strandbjörken) av Ilmari Kianto nämns björkens ritva ’späd hängande lövrik kvist’. I Finland var Ritva under 1940-talet det vanligaste flicknamnet. I den rikssvenska almanackan 5 juli.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
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●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1999 | 2,270 |
| 2000 | 2,255 |
| 2001 | 2,228 |
| 2002 | 2,213 |
| 2003 | 2,194 |
| 2004 | 2,167 |
| 2005 | 2,154 |
| 2006 | 2,124 |
| 2007 | 2,104 |
| 2008 | 2,083 |
| 2009 | 2,058 |
| 2010 | 2,031 |
| 2011 | 1,993 |
| 2012 | 1,972 |
| 2013 | 1,943 |
| 2014 | 1,907 |
| 2015 | 1,878 |
| 2016 | 1,842 |
| 2017 | 1,804 |
| 2018 | 1,751 |
| 2019 | 1,700 |
| 2020 | 1,647 |
SE SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) — 22 years between 1999–2020. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Ritva Arvelob. 1921FIFinnish actress, film director and screenwriter (1921–2013)
- Pirkko Arob. 1923FInot in their usual nameFinnish politician and journalist
- Ritva Valkamab. 1932FIFinnish actress (1932–2020)
- Kaarina Drombergb. 1942FInot in their usual nameFinnish politician
- Käpy Paavilainenb. 1947FInot in their usual nameFinnish architect
- Hannele Laurib. 1952FInot in their usual nameFinnish actress
- Kike Elomaab. 1955FInot in their usual nameFinnish politician, bodybuilder, and singer
- Ritva Viljanenb. 1958FIformer mayor of the city of Vantaa
- Mari Rantasilab. 1963FInot in their usual nameFinnish actress, director, and singer
- Ritva Muikkucostume designer
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 20 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 42K | #69 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 28K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 1999 | 2.3K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2000 | 2.3K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2001 | 2.2K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2002 | 2.2K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2003 | 2.2K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2004 | 2.2K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2005 | 2.2K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2006 | 2.1K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2007 | 2.1K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2008 | 2.1K | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia given-name 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 · 42 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Ritva?
- We estimate roughly 30 thousand people bear Ritva (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
- In which country does Ritva have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 28 thousand people bear Ritva in Finland, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled ritva.
- Where is Ritva most common?
- Ritva is densest in Finland, where the national register counts about 1 in 202 people carrying it.
- How common is Ritva compared with other names?
- In Finland, Ritva is the 81st most common given name of 51,554 given names recorded there.
- Is Ritva a male or female name?
- Ritva 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 Ritva mean?
- Recorded meaning: a slender, hanging branch, as of a birch or a willow.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ritvaThe 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
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, “Ritva” — the 81st most common given name in Finland. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.