Teresa

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: A female given name from Ancient Greek, the Spanish and Italian form of Theresa

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

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

Teresa is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Spain it is the 32nd most common given name.

rarermore common
  • PTPortugal≈1 in 218(inferred from the name graph)
  • SVEl Salvador≈1 in 277
  • ITItaly≈1 in 450

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 Teresa 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.

United States (measured from records)

402,455 people, 2020

#205 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

8 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
489 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 123 (inferred from the name graph)

Poland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

TeresaLatin(measured from records)
ԹերեզաArmenian(measured from records)
טרסהHebrew(measured from records)
ተሬሳEthiopic(measured from records)
ΤερεζαGreek(measured from records)
เทเรซ่าThai(measured from records)
თერეზაGeorgian(measured from records)
테레자Hangul(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Tereza in BR Brazil, טרסה in PL Poland and Therese in SE Sweden.

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)

Italian and Spanish form of Theresa. In the English-speaking world the name is often chosen in this spelling by Roman Catholics, with particular reference to the Spanish saint, Teresa of Avila (Teresa

Sources 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.

How Teresa is read(measured from records)

Teresa is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.

  • English44%

    A female given name from Ancient Greek, the Spanish and Italian form of Theresa.

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

  • Spanish39%

    Latín Therasia/Terasia/Teresia; quizá ligado a la isla de Tera, aunque la etimología es dudosa.

    as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios

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)

Teresa 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 Teresa is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#457402,4551 in 827402KTeresa489
PL Poland—312,0531 in 123312Kטרסה2
CZ Czechia—167,384as Tereza1 in 64167K—1
BR Brazil#77161,966as Tereza1 in 1.3K220KTereza177
IT Italy#105≈140,000 est.≈1 in 450270Teresa187
ES Spain#3299,9401 in 500108KTeresa259
PT Portugal#41≈47,000 est.≈1 in 218listedTeresa174
SE Sweden#3736,255as Therese1 in 28136KTherese134
SV El Salvador#65≈23,000 est.≈1 in 277—Teresa49

402,455 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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names); MVČR — living population register 2017; ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); the pt-irn-lista-nomes 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Teresa is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name38 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Teresae, Terésa, Tere'Sa, 'Teresa, Térésa

  • English given name191 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Poland, Philippines

    Languages: English, Polish, German

    Also written Theresa, Tereza, Тереза, Therese, 'Teresa

  • a separate name7 spellings in the group

    Also written Téresa, Térésa, Terêsa, Térèsa, Terésa

  • Finnish given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Finland, Spain, United Kingdom

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Tereša, Tërësä, Térésa

  • Turkish given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Türkiye, Spain, Italy

    Languages: Turkish, Azerbaijani, Uzbek

    Also written Terēsa

90 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)

Teresa is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Italian and Spanish form of Theresa. In the English-speaking world the name is often chosen in this spelling by Roman Catholics, with particular reference to the Spanish saint, Teresa of Avila (Teresa

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In Italian, Dal greco therasia, 'cacciatrice'.

    as a nameDizionario Dei Nomi e Cognomi Italiani

  • In Italian, Dal greco therasia = cacciatrice. 15 ottobre. Si usa anche. ma raro, il maschile Teresio. A Teresa appartiene esclusivamente, in Piemonte. il mozzicone Gin, e spesso anclie Ginota. Sarebbe dunque l'etimo dei cognomi monferrini Ginacca, Gi- natta. Forse. dal inascbile, Resio, Resi. -nelli, Rasini.

    as a nameNomi e Cognomi: Saggio di ricerche etimologiche e storiche

  • In Swedish, Teresa är den spanska och italienska formen av → Teresia. Det har blivit känt genom Teresa av Ávila (1515–82), ett spanskt helgon.

    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)

1400160018002000Teresa de Jesús, b. 1515Carlota Joaquina of Spain, b. 1775Mercedes of Orléans, b. 1860Infanta Marie Anne of Portugal, b. 1861Teresa Wright, b. 1918Kiri Te Kanawa, b. 1944Teresa Teng, b. 1953Rosie O'Donnell, b. 1962Teresa Palmer, b. 1986Teresa Ruiz, b. 1988

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)

InformalHi Teresa,

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 57 countries.

Official registers attesting Teresa
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020402K#118
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—312K#17
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)2026312K#17
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—108K#43
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—100K#94
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—83K#534
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)202262K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—61K#494
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—4.6K#642
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20201.8K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)2020879—
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—536#626

Reference works 8

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 Teresa a male or female name?
Teresa 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 Teresa?
In the etymology graph, Terry, Theresa and Terri are forms of the same name in other languages; Teresita, Teresinha and Tere are recorded short or pet forms.
Where does the name Teresa come from?
Italian and Spanish form of Theresa. In the English-speaking world the name is often chosen in this spelling by Roman Catholics, with particular reference to the Spanish saint, Teresa of Avila (Teresa Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
In which country does Teresa have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 402 thousand people named Teresa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled teresa.
Where is Teresa most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Teresa is densest in Poland — about 1 in 123 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
What does the name Teresa mean?
In English, A female given name from Ancient Greek, the Spanish and Italian form of Theresa.
How do you pronounce Teresa?
A machine transcription gives /təɹiːsə/ (IPA) for English.
How common is the name Teresa?
In the United States, the national register counted 402,455 people named Teresa in 2020, about 1 in 827 residents.
How common is Teresa compared with other names?
In the United States, Teresa is the 457th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Teresa?

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

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, “Teresa” — the 457th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Teresa parses inside a full name →