Samantha
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Germanic origin, meaning "right thought"
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/səmænθə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Samantha is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Australia it is the 95th most common given name.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 546(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 643
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 691
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- #486 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 617 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 546 (inferred from the name graph)
517,508 people, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Germanic origin, meaning "right thought".
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Samantha 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #229 | 517,508 | 1 in 643 | 517K | Samantha | 617 |
| GB United Kingdom | #118 | ≈95,000 est. | ≈1 in 691 | — | Samantha | 351 |
| AU Australia | #95 | ≈47,000 est. | ≈1 in 546 | 83 | Samantha | 294 |
| ZA South Africa | #189 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Samantha | 151 |
| IT Italy | #552 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Samantha | 167 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 24,068 | 1 in 702 | 24K | — | 43 |
| GY Guyana | — | 1,189 | 1 in 631 | 1.2K | — | 20 |
517,508 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); INEC — civil registry names; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Samantha 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.
Of problematic and much debated 214 origin. It arose in the southern states of
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, Nom moderne anglais, probablement formé sur Samuel; hébreu « Dieu a entendu ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In English, Aramaic name meaning 'listener'.
as a nameIrish first names
In French, Prénom moderne anglais, souvent tenu pour une création sur Samuel.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In English, Possibly Aramaic origin
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- Samantha Eggarb. 1939GBBritish actress (1939–2025)
- Samantha Foxb. 1966GBBritish singer
- Sam Taylor-Johnsonb. 1967GBnot in their usual nameBritish film director (born 1967)
- Samantha Beeb. 1969CACanadian comedic actress and author (born 1969)
- Samantha Mathisb. 1970USAmerican actress and trade union leader (born 1970)
- Samantha Powerb. 1970USIrish-American academic, author and diplomat
- Samantha Smithb. 1972USAmerican peace activist and child actress (1972–1985)
- Samantha Mortonb. 1977GBBritish actress
- Samantha Cristoforettib. 1977ITItalian European Space Agency astronaut, former Italian Air Force pilot and engineer (1977)
- Samantha Stosurb. 1984AUAustralian tennis player (born 1984)
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 116 sources across 60 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 517K | #81 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 24K | #84 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 2K | — |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 1.2K | #36 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 660 | #81 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 399 | — |
| AU Australia | NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present) | 2013 | 83 | #84 |
| AU Australia | QLD BDM — Top 100 Baby Names Queensland (1960–present) | 2013 | 57 | — |
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 Samantha mean, and where does it come from?
- Germanic origin, meaning "right thought". Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- Is Samantha a male or female name?
- Samantha 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 Samantha?
- In the etymology graph, Sami is a form of the same name in other languages; Sam, Sammy and Sammie are recorded short or pet forms.
- In which country does Samantha have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 518 thousand people named Samantha, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled samantha.
- How common is the name Samantha?
- In the United States, the national register counted 517,508 people named Samantha in 2020, about 1 in 643 residents.
- How common is Samantha compared with other names?
- In the United States, Samantha is the 229th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Samantha?
- A machine transcription gives /səmænθə/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Samantha?
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/samanthaThe 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, “Samantha” — the 229th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.