Melody
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from a woman's name, Melodia; first attested Melodia 1212 Cur (Berks)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mɛlədi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Melody is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 1.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- ZMZambia≈1 in 2.8K
- LALaos≈1 in 2.8K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 527 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈340,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Philippines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Melo in LA Laos.
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)
from a woman's name, Melodia; first attested Melodia 1212 Cur (Berks)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Melody 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈340,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | Melody | 51 |
| US United States | #568 | 86,671 | 1 in 3.8K | 87K | Melody | 527 |
| PH Philippines | #269 | ≈67,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Melody | 128 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Melody | 59 |
| GB United Kingdom | #661 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.2K | 16 | Melody | 188 |
| ZM Zambia | #107 | ≈6,300 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | — | Melody | 17 |
| LA Laos | — | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | — | Melo | 6 |
| SG Singapore | #357 | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | — | Melody | 77 |
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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–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)
Melody 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.
Anglicized form of Gaelic O Maoileidigh ‘descendant of Maoleidigh', a byname composed of the elements maol ‘chief’ -t- eidigh ‘ugly’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A sequence of notes that makes up a musical phrase
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Melody är ett engelskt namn, lika med substantivet melody ’melodi’. Det har blivit populärt de senaste åren, i likhet med andra namn som har Mel- som första stavelse.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In French, From English melody, 'song, tune'.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In English, Like song; Greek/Celtic
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- Melody Andersonb. 1955CACanadian-American actress
- Melody Thomas Scottb. 1956USactress
- Mimi Miyagib. 1973PHnot in their usual nameAmerican pornographic actress
- Melody Perkinsb. 1974USAmerican actress, model and dancer
- melody.b. 1982USJapanese-American fashion designer, television host, singer
- Melody Thorntonb. 1984USAmerican singer
- Melody Gardotb. 1985USAmerican jazz singer
- Melody Klaverb. 1990NLDutch actress
- Lily-Rose Deppb. 1999FRnot in their usual nameFrench-American actress (born 1999)
- Melody Marksb. 2000USAmerican pornographic actress
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 88 sources across 50 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 87K | #611 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 3.1K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 137 | #611 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 16 | #230 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2018 | 6 | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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)
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 Melody mean, and where does it come from?
- from a woman's name, Melodia; first attested Melodia 1212 Cur (Berks) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- Is Melody a male or female name?
- Melody 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.
- In which country does Melody have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 337 thousand people named Melody in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled melody.
- How common is the name Melody?
- In the United States, the national register counted 86,671 people named Melody in 2020, about 1 in 3.8 thousand residents.
- How common is Melody compared with other names?
- In Zambia, Melody is the 107th most common given name of 8,845 given names recorded there.
- What are other forms of the name Melody?
- In the etymology graph, Mélodie is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Melody?
- A machine transcription gives /mɛlədi/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Melody?
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/melodyThe 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, “Melody” — the 107th most common given name in Zambia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.