Vanessa

given name · Portuguese · Latin script

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

Vanessa is a given name, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the 60th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Portuguese and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Name invented by Jonathan Swift for Esther Vanhomrigh; later widely adopted beyond Ireland.

rarermore common
  • COColombia1 in 387◐
  • SVEl Salvador1 in 411
  • BRBrazil1 in 532

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

≈815K ●

across 12 countries

#266 ●

of 16M given names

3 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
448 ●

1.5M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 532 ◐

Brazil

Spellings & scripts●

VanessaLatin · Portuguese●6.8M records
ונסהHebrew · Hebrew●2.9K records
ᲕანესსაGeorgian · Georgian●15 records

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Vannessa in FR France, AT Austria, PL Poland and 2 more and ונסה 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●

Name invented by Jonathan Swift for Esther Vanhomrigh; later widely adopted beyond Ireland.

Sources 1

  • Irish first names

Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Vanessa is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil#60397,874351K rec.1 in 532419KVanessa248
US United States#810238,897299K rec.1 in 1.4K239KVanessa448
PE Peru#131230,034176K rec.——Vanessa101
MX Mexico#261181,274122K rec.—267Vanessa226
VE Venezuela#154169,668100K rec.——Vanessa99
CO Colombia#67160,71034K rec.—2Vanessa177
CL Chile#18887,1777.6K rec.—2Vanessa134
AR Argentina#62482,20047K rec.—47Vanessa98
FR France—80,810△603 rec.1 in 84081KVannessa81
SV El Salvador#4665,96543K rec.——Vanessa61
ES Spain#14944,78595K rec.1 in 1.1K45KVanessa174
PH Philippines—19,87027K rec.——Vanessa111

Roughly 398K people in Brazil bear this name (about 1 in 532). 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●

  • Portuguese6.8M56%
  • English2.1M17%
  • Spanish1.6M13%
  • French661K5%
  • German211K2%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Portuguese6,846,07756%
English2,113,71417%
Spanish1,551,84113%
French660,7265%
German211,3742%

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◐

Vanessa is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name2.6M records spelled Vanessa40 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, Australia, Germany

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written 'Vanessa, Vánessá, Vąnessą, Vanéssa, Vanessa'

  • French given name723K records spelled Vanessa33 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Spain, United States, Belgium

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Vanéssa, Vanèssa, Vanëssa, Van-Essa, Vànessà

  • a separate given name120K records spelled Vanessa3 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Vânessa, Vanêssa

  • Czech given name99K records spelled Vanessa67 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia, Poland, Croatia, Spain

    Languages: Czech, Polish, Croatian

    Also written Vanesa, Ванесса, Ванеса, Ванэсса, Ванэса

  • Finnish given name23K records spelled Vanessa7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, United States, Hungary, Slovenia

    Languages: Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian

    Also written Vänêssä, Vänëssä, Vänessä, Vànéssà

  • Indonesian given name22K records spelled Vanessa4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Philippines, United States, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written 'Vanessa, Vànêssá

  • Lao given name12K records spelled Vanessa47 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, United States, Thailand, Philippines

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written Vanesa, Vannessa, วาเนสซ่า, วาเนสซา, Wanessa

74 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●

Vanessa 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 French, a female given name from English, of recent usage

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

  • In English, A female given name originating as a coinage.

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

  • In French, Prénom féminin moderne, créé par Jonathan Swift; peut aussi évoquer le papillon Vanessa. Fête non indiquée.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

  • In French, Du papillon; symbole de métamorphose, beauté, instabilité et lunatisme. Pas de saint/jour indiqué.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

  • In French, Nom créé en anglais, popularisé au XVIIIe s.; souvent rattaché au papillon du genre Vanessa.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

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●

02K4K6K8K1900195020007.6K · 1985

Show as table
Vanessa in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1900–2025
Yearrecords
19006
19135
191510
19168
19176
19196
19206
19215
19226
19239
19259
19275
19286
19295
193010
19317
19329
19337
193532
193620
193717
193815
19397
194014
194111
194216
194310
194413
194519
194614
194759
194869
194970
195091
1951176
1952695
19532,007
19542,643
19552,698
19562,617
19572,379
19582,744
19593,120
19602,711
19612,765
19622,244
19632,032
19642,056
19651,632
19661,643
19671,869
19681,797
19692,234
19702,576
19712,657
19722,280
19732,144
19742,353
19752,440
19762,463
19773,209
19783,853
19794,102
19804,426
19814,749
19826,154
19836,388
19847,156
19857,563
19867,469
19877,348
19887,516
19896,962
19906,409
19915,926
19926,080
19935,890
19945,552
19955,404
19965,746
19975,796
19985,830
19995,287
20005,134
20014,672
20024,455
20034,352
20044,350
20054,095
20064,169
20074,447
20084,032
20093,523
20102,888
20112,620
20122,554
20132,095
20141,927
20151,729
20161,664
20171,521
20181,378
20191,224
20201,384
20211,226
20221,026
20231,014
2024938
2025813

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 109 years between 1900–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

19201940196019802000Vanessa Redgrave, b. 1937Vanessa L. Williams, b. 1963Vanessa Paradis, b. 1972Vanessa-Mae, b. 1978Vanessa Ferlito, b. 1980Vanessa Lee Chester, b. 1984Vanessa Hudgens, b. 1988Vanessa Kirby, b. 1988Gabriella Wilde, b. 1989Bianca Andreescu, b. 2000

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 120 sources across 70 countries.

Official registers attesting Vanessa
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—419K#106
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes no Brasil API (Census 2010 + 2022)—418K#19
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022398K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—396K#69
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020239K#237
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)202481K#1,275
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—31K#251
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—30K#142
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202420K#111
AT AustriaStatistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024)202410K#150
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—9K#201
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)20269K#201

Reference works 3

  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • 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 · 1,618 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Vanessa?
We estimate roughly 815 thousand people bear Vanessa (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
In which country does Vanessa have the most bearers?
We estimate about 398 thousand people bear Vanessa in Brazil, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled vanessa.
How common is Vanessa compared with other names?
In Brazil, Vanessa is the 60th most common given name of 536,280 given names recorded there.
Is Vanessa a male or female name?
Vanessa 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 Vanessa mean?
Recorded meaning: Name invented by Jonathan Swift for Esther Vanhomrigh; later widely adopted beyond Ireland.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/vanessa

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, “Vanessa” — the 60th most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Vanessa parses inside a full name →