Lisa
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Fon (Togo/Benin): sun god and creator, in chameleon form; also Hebrew short form of Elizabeth
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Lisa is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 28th most common given name.
- IEIreland≈1 in 193(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 214
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 218
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Lisa itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #64 (measured from records)
- 9 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 662 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 193 (inferred from the name graph)
864,260 people, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Лиза in FI Finland.
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)
Fon (Togo/Benin): sun god and creator, in chameleon form; also Hebrew short form of Elizabeth.
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lisa 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #28 | 864,260 | 1 in 385 | 864K | Lisa | 662 |
| GB United Kingdom | #35 | ≈310,000 est. | ≈1 in 214 | 87 | Lisa | 422 |
| DE Germany | #102 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 519 | — | Lisa | 295 |
| CA Canada | #24 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 248 | 9 | Lisa | 341 |
| IT Italy | #91 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 419 | 202 | Lisa | 195 |
| AU Australia | #27 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 231 | 46 | Lisa | 334 |
| FI Finland | — | 59,387as Liisa | 1 in 94 | 104K | Лиза | 59 |
| IE Ireland | #19 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 193 | — | Lisa | 185 |
| NZ New Zealand | #25 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 218 | 12 | Lisa | 183 |
864,260 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); QLD BDM — Top 100 Baby Names Queensland (1960–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Lisa del Giocondob. 1479FRsubject of the Mona Lisa
- Queen Noor of Jordanb. 1951USnot in their usual nameQueen and Queen Dowager of Jordan; philanthropist and activist
- Lisa Murkowskib. 1957USUnited States Senator from Alaska since 2002
- Rosanna Arquetteb. 1959USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Lisa Gerrardb. 1961AUAustralian musician, singer and composer
- Lisa Kudrowb. 1963USAmerican actress (born 1963)
- Lisa Edelsteinb. 1966USAmerican actress (born 1966)
- Lisa Bonetb. 1967USAmerican actress
- Lisa Annb. 1972USAmerican pornographic actress
- Olivia Munnb. 1980USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress, comedian, television personality and author
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(measured from records)
Attested in 131 sources across 68 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 864K | #36 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 3.9K | #367 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 2K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 627 | #36 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 256 | — |
| IT Italy | ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend) | 2024 | 202 | #129 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 48 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 9 | #474 |
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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Lisa mean, and where does it come from?
- Fon (Togo/Benin): sun god and creator, in chameleon form; also Hebrew short form of Elizabeth. Recorded by African Names.
- In which country does Lisa have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 864 thousand people named Lisa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lisa.
- What are other forms of the name Lisa?
- In the etymology graph, Elizabeth, Isabel and Betty are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Elsabeth.
- 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.
- How common is the name Lisa?
- In the United States, the national register counted 864,260 people named Lisa in 2020, about 1 in 385 residents.
- How common is Lisa compared with other names?
- In the United States, Lisa is the 28th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lisa?
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/lisaThe 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, “Lisa” — the 28th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.