Nancy
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Pet form of Anne, now sometimes used as an independent name
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/nænsi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nancy is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 27th most common given name.
- IEIreland≈1 in 303(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 308
- CNChina≈1 in 319
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)
- #130 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 616 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 303 (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,400,000 people, est.
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)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
English diminutive of Nan, a hypocoristic of Anne or Hannah.
Sources 1
- Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios
Attested across 27 languages in the etymology graph.
How Nancy is read(measured from records)
Nancy is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English70%
Pet form of Anne, now sometimes used as an independent name.
as a nameIrish first names
An effeminate man, especially a homosexual.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish16%
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nancy 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 | — | ≈4,400,000 est. | ≈1 in 319 | — | Nancy | 76 |
| US United States | #51 | 772,570 | 1 in 431 | 772K | Nancy | 616 |
| GB United Kingdom | #91 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 401 | 578 | Nancy | 272 |
| EG Egypt | #216 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 721 | — | Nancy | 124 |
| CA Canada | #41 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 308 | 5 | Nancy | 330 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 54,430 | 1 in 311 | 54K | Nancy | 51 |
| IE Ireland | #45 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 303 | — | Nancy | 74 |
| SG Singapore | #27 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 417 | — | Nancy | 97 |
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; ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; INEC — civil registry names. 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)
Nancy is also recorded in 3 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 the French place name Nancy; later used as a given name.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Of uncertain origin. From the 18th century it is clearly used as a pet form of pAnn (see Nan)}, but it may originally have been a similar formation deriving from the common medieval given name Annis, a vernacular form of Agnes. Nowadays it is an independent name, and was especially popular in America __ between about 1920 and 1960.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Swedish, Nancy är ursprungligen en engelsk smekform till Anne (→ Ann). Som många andra engelska förnamn var det populärt i Sverige runt förra sekelskiftet. En känd litterär gestalt är Nancy i Charles Dickens roman Oliver Twist (1838). I Sverige har namnet blivit känt genom Elsie Johanssons (1931–2025) romantrilogi om Nancy (1996–2001).
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Nancy Reaganb. 1921USFirst Lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989
- Nancy Kellyb. 1921USAmerican actress (1921–1995)
- Nancy Olsonb. 1928USAmerican actress
- Nancy Pelosib. 1940USAmerican politician (born 1940)
- Nancy Sinatrab. 1940USAmerican singer and actress (born 1940)
- Nancy Meyersb. 1949USAmerican film director, producer and screenwriter
- Nancy Allenb. 1950USAmerican actress
- Nan Goldinb. 1953USnot in their usual nameAmerican photographer (born 1953)
- Nancy Cartwrightb. 1957USAmerican actress
- Nancy J. Currie-Greggb. 1958USAmerican engineer, army officer, astronaut, and professor
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 126 sources across 69 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 772K | #40 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 54K | #18 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 644 | #40 |
| GB United Kingdom | ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024) | 2024 | 578 | #81 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 265 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 35 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2025 | 21 | #96 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 19 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 5 | #789 |
Reference works 4
- 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
- Where does the name Nancy come from?
- English diminutive of Nan, a hypocoristic of Anne or Hannah. Recorded by Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios.
- What are other forms of the name Nancy?
- In the etymology graph, Ana, Anna and Anne are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Ann and Annice.
- Is Nancy a male or female name?
- Nancy 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 Nancy?
- In the United States, the national register counted 772,570 people named Nancy in 2020, about 1 in 431 residents.
- How common is Nancy compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Nancy is the 27th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
- What does the name Nancy mean?
- In English, Pet form of Anne, now sometimes used as an independent name.
- In which country does Nancy have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.4 million people named Nancy in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nancy.
- How do you pronounce Nancy?
- A machine transcription gives /nænsi/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Nancy?
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/nancyThe 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, “Nancy” — the 27th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.