Agnes
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from Greek agnos ‘pure, chaste’, learned form of vernacular Anes/Anneis; first attested Agnes de Papewurda 1160 P (C)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Agnes is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country. In Hungary it is the 30th most common given name.
- HUHungary1 in 115(measured from records)
- SESweden1 in 369
- DKDenmark1 in 823
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)
- #968 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 442 (measured from records)
- 1 in 115 (inferred from the name graph)
≈160,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Hungary
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Ágnes in HU Hungary.
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 Greek agnos ‘pure, chaste’, learned form of vernacular Anes/Anneis; first attested Agnes de Papewurda 1160 P (C)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Agnes 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 | #297 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | listed | Agnes | 79 |
| ID Indonesia | #286 | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Agnes | 179 |
| HU Hungary | #30 | 85,338 | 1 in 115 | 85K | Ágnes | 176 |
| PH Philippines | #324 | ≈64,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Agnes | 127 |
| FR France | #184 | ≈53,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | 113K | Agnes | 362 |
| SE Sweden | #204 | 27,614 | 1 in 369 | 28K | Agnes | 88 |
| DK Denmark | #490 | 7,129 | 1 in 823 | 7.1K | Agnes | 81 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Nyilvántartó — Top-100 given names in population (2020–2025); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Agnes 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.
In English, Greek 'pure'; brought to Ireland by the English, sometimes equated with Una.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, Agnes de Papewurda 1160 P (C); Hugo Agneis 1219 AssL; Robert Agnes 1230 P (L). Fr Agnes, from Greek áγvóς, ‘pure, chaste’, the learned form of the vernacular Anes, Anneis. v. ANNAS.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A female given name from Ancient Greek.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, do gr. haghné, ‘pura, casta’; matronímico ligado a santas cristãs
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In Swedish, Agnes är av grekiskt ursprung, bildat till (h)agnós ’ren, kysk’, senare associerat med latinets agnus ’lamm’. Namnet, också i formen Agnis, användes under medeltiden. Agnes har varit ett populärt flicknamn under de senaste årtiondena. År 2006 nådde det plats tre bland de vanligaste tilltalsnamnen. I både den rikssvenska och finlandssvenska almanackan 21 januari, efter en martyr i Rom (död 303).
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)
- Agnesb. 300ITChristian martyr
- Agnès Sorelb. 1422FRFrench Royal mistress (1422-1450)
- Isabelle de Charrièreb. 1740CHnot in their usual nameDutch French-language writer and composer (1740-1805)
- Mary of Teckb. 1867GBnot in their usual nameQueen consort of the United Kingdom from 1910 to 1936
- Agnes Mooreheadb. 1900USAmerican actress (1900–1974)
- Ethel Mermanb. 1908USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and singer (1908-1984)
- Joan Leslieb. 1925USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (1925-2015)
- Agnetha Fältskogb. 1950SEnot in their usual nameSwedish singer (born 1950)
- Agnes Monicab. 1986IDIndonesian singer and actress
- Ágnes Szávayb. 1988HUHungarian 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 130 sources across 67 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 28K | #157 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 15K | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 7.1K | #98 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present) | 2024 | 382 | #8 |
Reference works 6
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Agnes mean, and where does it come from?
- from Greek agnos ‘pure, chaste’, learned form of vernacular Anes/Anneis; first attested Agnes de Papewurda 1160 P (C) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- Is Agnes a male or female name?
- Agnes 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 Agnes?
- In the etymology graph, Nancy, Ines and Inez are forms of the same name in other languages; Aggie is a recorded short or pet form.
- In which country does Agnes have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 160 thousand people named Agnes in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled agnes.
- Where is Agnes most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Agnes is densest in Hungary — about 1 in 115 people — even though Nigeria holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Agnes?
- In Hungary, the national register counted 85,338 people named Agnes in 2025, about 1 in 115 residents.
- How common is Agnes compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Agnes is the 297th most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Agnes?
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/agnesThe 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, “Agnes” — the 297th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.