Ida
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from the Old English name Ida, from id- ‘labour’; first attested Ida 1175 AD i (Mx)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/aɪdə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ida is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 31st most common given name.
- SESweden1 in 187(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 260
- NONorway1 in 272
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Ida itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #812 (measured from records)
- 8 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 431 (measured from records)
- 1 in 187 (inferred from the name graph)
≈350,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Ada in NG Nigeria, HK Hong Kong, CN China and Eda in TR Türkiye.
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 the Old English name Ida, from id- ‘labour’; first attested Ida 1175 AD i (Mx)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ida 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 | — | ≈350,000 est. | ≈1 in 4K | — | Ada | 58 |
| TR Türkiye | #286 | ≈98,000 est. | ≈1 in 837 | 2.6K | Eda | 124 |
| NG Nigeria | #487 | ≈90,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Ada | 106 |
| SE Sweden | #36 | 54,522 | 1 in 187 | 55K | Ida | 139 |
| US United States | #417 | 42,677as Ada | 1 in 7.8K | 42K | Ida | 431 |
| DK Denmark | #137 | 22,571 | 1 in 260 | 23K | Ida | 159 |
| NO Norway | #72 | 20,093 | 1 in 272 | 61K | Ida | 120 |
| HK Hong Kong | #31 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 489 | — | Ada | 72 |
| FI Finland | #799 | 14,686 | 1 in 379 | 32K | Ida | 42 |
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; TÜİK NIP — newborn names; SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); 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)
Ida 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 German, from a Germanic short name stem, probably 'work, labor'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In Irish, Variant of Ita; also a Germanic name used in England and revived in the 19th century.
as a nameIrish first names
‘rice paddy by the well’; habitational name from Idamura in Musashi (now Tokyo and Saitama prefectures). Variously written and found mostly in eastern Japan and the Ryukyu Islands.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
a stream of praise; a period of time; libation.
as a nameThe Penguin book of Hindu names for boys
In Portuguese, (outbound) trip, departure
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese
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)
- Ida McKinleyb. 1847USFirst Lady of the United States from 1897 to 1901
- Ida Wellsb. 1862USAmerican journalist and civil rights activist (1862–1931)
- Ida Dalserb. 1880ITmother of Benito Mussolini's natural son (1880–1937)
- Ida Noddackb. 1896DEGerman chemist (1896–1978)
- Ida Rolfb. 1896USAmerican biochemist, creator of Rolfing (1896–1979)
- Ida Kamińskab. 1899UAPolish actress (1899-1980)
- Tuulikki Pietiläb. 1917USnot in their usual nameFinnish artist (1917–2009)
- Ida Lupinob. 1918GBBritish actress (1918–1995)
- Ida Haendelb. 1928PLPolish-born British violinist and violin teacher
- Marie Christine, Princess Michael of Kentb. 1945ATnot in their usual namewife of Prince Michael of Kent
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 130 sources across 68 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 61K | #30 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 55K | #68 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 40K | #1,045 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 32K | #60 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 29K | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 23K | #18 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 20K | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 15K | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present) | 2024 | 387 | #7 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 209 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 148 | #1,045 |
Reference works 8
- 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
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname 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 Ida mean, and where does it come from?
- from the Old English name Ida, from id- ‘labour’; first attested Ida 1175 AD i (Mx) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Ida?
- A machine transcription gives /aɪdə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Ida have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 348 thousand people named Ida in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ada.
- Where is Ida most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ida is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 187 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- Is Ida a male or female name?
- Ida 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 Ida?
- In the etymology graph, Idella and Idelle are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Ida?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 54,522 people named Ida, about 1 in 187 residents.
- How common is Ida compared with other names?
- In Hong Kong, Ida is the 31st most common given name of 23,276 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ida?
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/idaThe 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, “Ida” — the 31st most common given name in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.