Mette

given name · Latin script

Meaning: topographic name from Old French mete ‘boundary stone’, ‘boundary’ (from Latin meta ‘bounded estate’)

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/mɛd̥ə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Mette is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country, where it is the 22nd most common given name.

rarermore common
  • DKDenmark1 in 155(measured from records)
  • NONorway1 in 588
  • SESweden1 in 9K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Denmark (measured from records)

37,932 people

Sources
201 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 155 (inferred from the name graph)

Denmark

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Mette: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Mette
  1. Old Frenchmete(measured from records)
  2. Latinmeta(measured from records)

topographic name from Old French mete ‘boundary stone’, ‘boundary’ (from Latin meta ‘bounded estate’).

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 27 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Mette 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.

Where Mette is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DK Denmark#2237,9321 in 15538KMette201
NO Norway#1009,3041 in 58832KMette96
FI Finland—2,5411 in 2.2K2.7KMette22
NL Netherlands—2,2201 in 7.8K2.2KMette33
SE Sweden#7361,1321 in 9K1.1KMette43

37,932 people counted by Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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: Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Mette is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Germany, Australia, Norway

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Metté, Mêtte

  • a separate given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, United States, Sweden, United Kingdom

    Also written Métté

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Metté

52 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Mette 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.

  • from a pet form of the female personal name Mechthild (see Metz).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Norwegian, a female given name of Danish origin

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Norwegian Bokmål, definite singular/plural of mett

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Norwegian Nynorsk, definite singular of mett

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Swedish, Mette är dels en lågtysk smekform till Mechtild (→ Matilda), dels en dansk form av → Margareta. En känd namnbärare är den norska kronprinsessan Mette-Marit (f. 1973). I den finlandssvenska almanackan 14 mars.

    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)

1940196019802000Mette Bock, b. 1957Mette Bloch, b. 1966Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway, b. 1973Mette Vestergaard, b. 1975Mette Heeno, b. 1976Mette Frederiksen, b. 1977Mette Towley, b. 1991Mette Poulsen, b. 1993Anne Mette Hansen, b. 1994Mette Tranborg, b. 1996

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)

InformalHej Mette,Hi Mette, (English)

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 57 sources across 26 countries.

Official registers attesting Mette
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—38K#2
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—32K#129
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20259.3K—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—2.7K#457
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—2.5K—
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—2.2K#772
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—1.8K#1,450
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—1.1K#1,559
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020791—
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present)2002135#50
NL NetherlandsSVB Kindernamen — annual newborn name frequency (Wayback-recovered)201768#201
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—26#9,970

Reference works 7

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

How do you pronounce Mette?
A machine transcription gives /mɛd̥ə/ (IPA) for Danish.
What does the name Mette mean, and where does it come from?
topographic name from Old French mete ‘boundary stone’, ‘boundary’ (from Latin meta ‘bounded estate’). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
Is Mette a male or female name?
Mette 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 Mette?
In the etymology graph, Margaret, Rita and Margarita are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Margrethe and Margrete.
In which country does Mette have the most bearers?
In Denmark, the national register counted about 38 thousand people named Mette, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mette.
Where is Mette most common?
Mette is densest in Denmark, where the national register counts about 1 in 155 people carrying it.
How common is the name Mette?
In Denmark, the national register counted 37,932 people named Mette, about 1 in 155 residents.
How common is Mette compared with other names?
In Denmark, Mette is the 22nd most common given name of 23,174 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Mette?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mette

The 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, “Mette” — the 22nd most common given name in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Mette parses inside a full name →