Iris
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: Latin Iris from Greek, the rainbow goddess and divine messenger; originally 'cinta' or 'ruta'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/iɾis/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Iris is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Honduras it is the 17th most common given name.
- HNHonduras≈1 in 293(inferred from the name graph)
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 495
- NLNetherlands≈1 in 895
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 Iris 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)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 408 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 293 (inferred from the name graph)
≈310,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Honduras, 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 איריס in IL Israel.
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)
Latin Iris from Greek, the rainbow goddess and divine messenger; originally 'cinta' or 'ruta'.
Sources 1
- Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios
How Iris is read(measured from records)
Iris is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- Spanish37%
Latin Iris from Greek, the rainbow goddess and divine messenger; originally 'cinta' or 'ruta'.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
- English34%
A plant of the genus Iris, common in the northern hemisphere, and generally having attractive blooms (See Iris (plant) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German7.2%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Iris in German.
- Portuguese5.2%
Pre-reform spelling (used until 1943 in Brazil and 1911 in Portugal) of íris.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
Iris 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 | — | ≈310,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | — | Iris | 64 |
| US United States | — | 80,798 | 1 in 4.1K | 80K | Iris | 408 |
| BR Brazil | #594 | 56,795 | 1 in 3.7K | 57K | Iris | 135 |
| HN Honduras | #17 | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 293 | — | Iris | 51 |
| VE Venezuela | #192 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 910 | — | Iris | 66 |
| NL Netherlands | — | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 895 | 23K | Iris | 66 |
| SE Sweden | — | 14,425 | 1 in 707 | 14K | — | 32 |
| SV El Salvador | #160 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 495 | — | Iris | 46 |
| IL Israel | #131 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 793 | 33 | איריס | 95 |
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; CBS Israel — Family names in Israel, 2017 ("שמות משפחה בישראל 2017"); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); the nl-meertens-voornamen 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Iris 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, Greek; from Iris, the winged messenger goddess of Olympus and rainbow personification.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Greek: ‘rainbow’. See main dictionary. APPENDIX: GERMAN APPENDIX: GERMAN Irma @ Short form of any of the feminine names formed with Irmen- ‘totality’, ‘everything’, ‘all’. See also ERMEN-. Irmengard ? Variant of ERMENGARD. Also: Irmgard, Irmingard.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Swedish, Iris är ett grekiskt namn, identiskt med ordet iris ’regnbåge’. I den grekiska mytologin är Iris regnbågens gudinna. Ordet är också en benämning på ögats regnbågshinna och på växten svärdslilja. Iris har blivit ett populärt namn de senaste årtiondena. I den rikssvenska almanackan 10 februari och i den finlandssvenska 14 november.
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)
- Iris Adrianb. 1912USAmerican actress (1912–1994)
- Iris Murdochb. 1919GBIrish-born British writer and philosopher (1919–1999)
- Iris Mountbattenb. 1920GBnoblewoman; English actress and model (1920-1982)
- Iris Apfelb. 1921USAmerican interior designer and fashion icon (1921–2024)
- Xiomara Castrob. 1959HNnot in their usual nameHonduran politician and businesswoman (born 1959)
- Iris Changb. 1968USChinese-American journalist and author of historical books (1968–2004)
- Clara Pagetb. 1988GBnot in their usual nameBritish actress
- Iris Mittenaereb. 1993FRFrench beauty pageant winner (born 1993)
- Iris Lawb. 2000GBBritish model
- Iris Apatowb. 2002USAmerican actress
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 60 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 80K | #655 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 57K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 54K | #519 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 50K | #780 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 23K | #129 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 14K | #298 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 6.3K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 5.1K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 3.7K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 3.3K | #519 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 388 | #655 |
Reference works 6
- 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)
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Iris a male or female name?
- Iris 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 Iris mean, and where does it come from?
- Latin Iris from Greek, the rainbow goddess and divine messenger; originally 'cinta' or 'ruta'. Recorded by Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios.
- In which country does Iris have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 313 thousand people named Iris in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled iris.
- How common is the name Iris?
- In the United States, the national register counted 80,798 people named Iris in 2020, about 1 in 4.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Iris compared with other names?
- In Honduras, Iris is the 17th most common given name of 23,588 given names recorded there.
- What are other forms of the name Iris?
- In the etymology graph, Iiris and Irida are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Iris?
- A machine transcription gives /iɾis/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What do you want to know about Iris?
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/irisThe 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, “Iris” — the 17th most common given name in Honduras. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.