Vanessa
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Name invented by Jonathan Swift for Esther Vanhomrigh; later widely adopted beyond Ireland
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/vənɛsə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Vanessa is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the 65th most common given name.
- PTPortugal≈1 in 501(inferred from the name graph)
- BRBrazil1 in 532
- COColombia≈1 in 901
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.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- #610 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 490 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 501 (inferred from the name graph)
397,874 people, 2022
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Portugal, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Vannessa in FR France.
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)
Name invented by Jonathan Swift for Esther Vanhomrigh; later widely adopted beyond Ireland.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Vanessa is read(measured from records)
Vanessa is one spelling over 4 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.
- English34%
Name invented by Jonathan Swift for Esther Vanhomrigh; later widely adopted beyond Ireland.
as a nameIrish first names
A female given name originating as a coinage.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish26%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Vanessa in Spanish.
- Portuguese19%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Vanessa in Portuguese.
- French8.1%
a female given name from English, of recent usage
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Prénom féminin moderne, créé par Jonathan Swift; peut aussi évoquer le papillon Vanessa. Fête non indiquée.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Du papillon; symbole de métamorphose, beauté, instabilité et lunatisme. Pas de saint/jour indiqué.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Nom créé en anglais, popularisé au XVIIIe s.; souvent rattaché au papillon du genre Vanessa.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
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)
Vanessa 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | #65 | 397,874 | 1 in 532 | 419K | Vanessa | 252 |
| US United States | #836 | 239,196 | 1 in 1.4K | 239K | Vanessa | 490 |
| FR France | — | ≈94,000 est. | ≈1 in 719 | 81K | Vannessa | 85 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈71,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Vanessa | 115 |
| CO Colombia | #71 | ≈54,000 est. | ≈1 in 901 | 2 | Vanessa | 182 |
| PT Portugal | #80 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 501 | listed | Vanessa | 154 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 19,577 | 1 in 864 | 20K | Vanessa | 77 |
397,874 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. 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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; the co-datosgov-candidates register; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); INEC — civil registry names; the pt-irn-lista-nomes register. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Vanessa Redgraveb. 1937GBBritish actress and activist (born 1937)
- Vanessa L. Williamsb. 1963USAmerican actress, singer and former Miss America (born 1963)
- Vanessa Paradisb. 1972FRFrench singer, model and actress
- Vanessa-Maeb. 1978SGBritish violinist
- Vanessa Ferlitob. 1980USAmerican actress
- Vanessa Lee Chesterb. 1984USAmerican actress
- Vanessa Hudgensb. 1988USAmerican actress and singer (born 1988)
- Vanessa Kirbyb. 1988GBBritish actress (born 1987)
- Gabriella Wildeb. 1989GBnot in their usual nameBritish actress
- Bianca Andreescub. 2000CAnot in their usual nameCanadian tennis player
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 121 sources across 70 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 419K | #106 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes no Brasil API (Census 2010 + 2022) | — | 418K | #19 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 398K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 396K | #69 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 239K | #237 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 81K | #1,275 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 20K | #111 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.5K | #69 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 1.3K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 813 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 299 | #237 |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Lista de Nomes Próprios admitidos | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- 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 Vanessa mean, and where does it come from?
- Name invented by Jonathan Swift for Esther Vanhomrigh; later widely adopted beyond Ireland. Recorded by Irish first names.
- Is Vanessa a male or female name?
- Vanessa 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 Vanessa?
- In the etymology graph, Esther, Vanesa and Wanessa are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Vanessa have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 398 thousand people named Vanessa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled vanessa.
- How do you pronounce Vanessa?
- A machine transcription gives /vənɛsə/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Vanessa?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 397,874 people named Vanessa in 2022, about 1 in 532 residents.
- How common is Vanessa compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Vanessa is the 65th most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Vanessa?
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/vanessaThe 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, “Vanessa” — the 65th most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.