Nora
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: Abbreviation of Eleonora or Leonora; in Ireland, also of Honora/Honoria
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Nora is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Kuwait it is the 78th most common given name.
- ARArgentina≈1 in 612(inferred from the name graph)
- HNHonduras≈1 in 815
- KWKuwait≈1 in 1.4K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 8 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 403 (measured from records)
- 1 in 283 (inferred from the name graph)
119,144 people, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Hungary
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Noreen in US United States, NO Norway.
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)
Abbreviation of Eleonora or Leonora; in Ireland, also of Honora/Honoria.
Sources 1
- Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
How Nora is read(measured from records)
Nora is one spelling over 3 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.
- Spanish42%
- English35%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Nora in English.
- French6.0%
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Nora 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 | #904 | 119,144 | 1 in 2.8K | 119K | Noreen | 403 |
| AR Argentina | #204 | ≈74,000 est. | ≈1 in 612 | 116 | Nora | 127 |
| PH Philippines | #493 | ≈68,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Nora | 93 |
| EG Egypt | #162 | ≈53,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Nora | 102 |
| HU Hungary | — | 34,526 | 1 in 283 | 35K | — | 2 |
| NO Norway | — | 13,125 | 1 in 417 | 45K | Noreen | 37 |
| HN Honduras | #95 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 815 | — | Nora | 38 |
| SE Sweden | — | 11,022 | 1 in 926 | 11K | Nora | 35 |
| KW Kuwait | #78 | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Nora | 57 |
119,144 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling nora. 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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Nyilvántartó — Top-100 given names in population (2020–2025); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)
Nora 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.
habitational name from any of the numerous places called Nora, from nora ‘draw well’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
perhaps a habitational name from localities named Nora in Modica and Scicli.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from a short form of the feminine personal name (E)leonora.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Nora Riccib. 1924ITItalian actress (1924-1976)
- Nora Ephronb. 1941USAmerican film director and writer (1941–2012)
- Nora Dunnb. 1952USAmerican actress and comedian
- Nora Miaob. 1952CNHong Kong actress
- Nora Twomeyb. 1971IEIrish film director
- N. K. Jemisinb. 1972USnot in their usual nameAmerican science fiction and fantasy writer
- Nora Salinasb. 1976MXMexican actress and model
- Nora Zehetnerb. 1981USAmerican actress
- Awkwafinab. 1988USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress, comedian, and rapper
- Nora Arnezederb. 1989FRFrench actress and singer
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 141 sources across 65 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 119K | #473 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 45K | #69 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 13K | — |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 11K | #372 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 7.4K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 6.4K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navn (1880–present) | 2025 | 357 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 286 | #473 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 30 | #15,708 |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Kotík, Antonín, Naše příjmení (nové vydání, 1897)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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
- Is Nora a male or female name?
- Nora 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 Nora mean, and where does it come from?
- Abbreviation of Eleonora or Leonora; in Ireland, also of Honora/Honoria. Recorded by Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios.
- What are other forms of the name Nora?
- In the etymology graph, Eleanor, Nelly and Noor are forms of the same name in other languages; Noreen, Norene and Nonie are recorded short or pet forms; it is recorded as a short form of Eleonora and Elnora.
- In which country does Nora have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 119 thousand people named Nora, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled noreen.
- Where is Nora most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Nora is densest in Hungary — about 1 in 283 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Nora?
- In the United States, the national register counted 119,144 people named Nora in 2020, about 1 in 2.8 thousand residents.
- How common is Nora compared with other names?
- In the United States, Nora is the 904th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nora?
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/noraThe 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, “Nora” — the 904th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.