Saoirse
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Irish Gaelic name, pronounced ‘seersha’: a modern coinage from the vocabulary word meaning ‘freedom’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Saoirse is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 145K(measured from records)
- IEIreland≈1 in 9.3K
- ISIceland1 in 88K
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)
- Sources
- 143 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 9.3K (inferred from the name graph)
2,297 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Irish Gaelic name, pronounced ‘seersha’: a modern coinage from the vocabulary word meaning ‘freedom’.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Saoirse 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 | — | 2,297 | 1 in 145K | 2.3K | Saoirse | 143 |
| IE Ireland | #394 | ≈560 est. | ≈1 in 9.3K | 205 | Saoirse | 81 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 295K | 41 | Saoirse | 108 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 213K | 1 | Saoirse | 46 |
| SE Sweden | — | 46 | 1 in 222K | 46 | — | 1 |
| IS Iceland | — | 4 | 1 in 88K | 4 | — | — |
2,297 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; CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present); NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Saoirse 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.
Irish Gaelic: modern name from the vocabulary word meaning ‘freedom’.
as a word
In Scottish Gaelic, alternative form of saorsa (“freedom”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Irish, freedom
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Erin Saoirse Adairb. 1991CACanadian folk musician
- Saoirse-Monica Jacksonb. 1993GBNorthern-Irish actress
- Saoirse Ronanb. 1994USIrish-American actress (born 1994)
- Maureen Bronnerb. 1995CAnot in their usual nameCanadian actress
- Saoirse Noonanb. 1999IEIrish footballer
- Saoirse E O'Sullivanb. 2000IEresearcher
- Saoirse O'Tooleb. 2000GBresearcher
- Saoirse Nic Gabhainnb. 2000GBresearcher
- Saoirse McHughIEIrish politician
- Saoirse RyanIEdisc jockey from Ireland
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 33 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.3K | #6,841 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2020 | 373 | — |
| IE Ireland | CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) | 2010 | 355 | #18 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2021 | 344 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 222 | — |
| IE Ireland | CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) | 2019 | 205 | #23 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 46 | #14,480 |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2025 | 41 | #44 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 19 | #196 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 14 | #6,841 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 11 | — |
| IS Iceland | Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry) | 2026 | 4 | — |
Reference works 2
- 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 Saoirse mean, and where does it come from?
- Irish Gaelic name, pronounced ‘seersha’: a modern coinage from the vocabulary word meaning ‘freedom’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Saoirse a male or female name?
- Saoirse 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.
- In which country does Saoirse have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.3 thousand people named Saoirse, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled saoirse.
- How common is the name Saoirse?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,297 people named Saoirse in 2020, about 1 in 145 thousand residents.
- How common is Saoirse compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Saoirse is the 394th most common given name of 14,976 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Saoirse?
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/saoirseThe 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, “Saoirse” — the 394th most common given name in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.