Mercy
given name · Latin script
Meaning: habitational name from places so named in Allier, Meuthe-etMoselle, and Yonne, derived from the Latin personal name Marcius, Martius, or Mercius + the locative suffix -acum
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mɛɾki/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Mercy is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country, where it is the 82nd most common given name.
- KEKenya≈1 in 131(inferred from the name graph)
- NGNigeria≈1 in 418
- ZMZambia≈1 in 773
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 296 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 131 (inferred from the name graph)
≈510,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Kenya, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
habitational name from places so named in Allier, Meuthe-etMoselle, and Yonne, derived from the Latin personal name Marcius, Martius, or Mercius + the locative suffix -acum.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mercy 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #82 | ≈510,000 est. | ≈1 in 418 | — | Mercy | 101 |
| KE Kenya | #6 | ≈410,000 est. | ≈1 in 131 | — | Mercy | 101 |
| PH Philippines | #715 | ≈77,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Mercy | 66 |
| ZM Zambia | #13 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 773 | 2 | Mercy | 33 |
| MW Malawi | #5 | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 963 | — | Mercy | 21 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 15,503 | 1 in 1.1K | 16K | Mercy | 21 |
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: INEC — civil registry names; ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections — candidate results. 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)
Mercy is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, from a Picard or Walloon form of Mercier.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Relenting; forbearance to cause or allow harm to another.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In frm, mercy (relenting; forbearance to cause or allow harm to another)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In enm, alternative form of mercien
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Mercy Lewisb. 1675USaccuser of the Salem witch trials
- Mercy Otis Warrenb. 1728USAmerican writer
- Mercy Williamsb. 1947INIndian politician; Mayor of Kochi
- Mercy Akideb. 1975NGassociation football player
- Mercy Aigbeb. 1978NGNigerian actress
- Mercy Johnsonb. 1984NGNigerian actress, film director and film producer
- Mercy Wanjiku Njorogeb. 1986KEKenyan steeplechase athlete
- Mercy Cheronob. 1991KEKenyan long-distance runner
- Mercy Jamesb. 2006MWMadonna's daughter
- Mercy MalickUSAmerican 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 78 sources across 42 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 16K | #137 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 12 | — |
| ZM Zambia | ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections — candidate results | 2021 | 2 | #43 |
Reference works 7
- 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
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Mercy mean, and where does it come from?
- habitational name from places so named in Allier, Meuthe-etMoselle, and Yonne, derived from the Latin personal name Marcius, Martius, or Mercius + the locative suffix -acum. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- Is Mercy a male or female name?
- Mercy 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 are other forms of the name Mercy?
- In the etymology graph, Mercia is a form of the same name in other languages; Merry is a recorded short or pet form.
- How do you pronounce Mercy?
- A machine transcription gives /mɛɾki/ (IPA) for Swahili.
- In which country does Mercy have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 512 thousand people named Mercy in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mercy.
- How common is the name Mercy?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted 15,503 people named Mercy in 2024, about 1 in 1.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Mercy compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Mercy is the 82nd most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mercy?
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/mercyThe 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, “Mercy” — the 82nd most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.