Charity
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from ONFr/OFr charité, 'alms-giving, hospitality' or 'Christian love'; first attested Herluin Caritet 1148–54 Bec (Sx)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Charity is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 963(inferred from the name graph)
- GHGhana≈1 in 2.4K
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 5.2K
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 433 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 908 (inferred from the name graph)
≈220,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Kenya, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from ONFr/OFr charité, 'alms-giving, hospitality' or 'Christian love'; first attested Herluin Caritet 1148–54 Bec (Sx)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Charity 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #102 | ≈220,000 est. | ≈1 in 963 | listed | Charity | 81 |
| CN China | — | ≈75,000 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Charity | 9 |
| KE Kenya | — | ≈59,000 est. | ≈1 in 908 | — | Charity | 33 |
| US United States | — | 28,979 | 1 in 11K | 29K | Charity | 433 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.5K | — | Charity | 81 |
| ZM Zambia | — | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 7 | Charity | 23 |
| GH Ghana | #158 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | listed | Charity | 52 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | — | Charity | 43 |
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; the wgnd-ng-names register; the masakhane register; ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections — candidate results. 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)
Charity 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.
In English, An organization, the objective of which is to carry out a charitable purpose.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, loving-kindness; benevolence
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, Latin; love of mankind
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In Khmer, power; dull; poor, cheap, low, small, weak, underprivileged, dumb. (see; ^ 5 .) 2 . p. to give change (money). (or: dumb, ignorant. to cheapen the country. not intelligent, ignorant. ° to obscure someone’s intelligence
as a wordHeadley, Cambodian-English Dictionary, Volume II (ម-អ)
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)
- Charity Adams Earleyb. 1918USUnited States African American woman Army officer
- Charity Ngilub. 1952KEKenyan politician
- Jessamyn Westb. 1968USnot in their usual nameAmerican librarian, information activist
- Charity Oparab. 1972NGNigerian sprinter
- Charity Wakefieldb. 1980GBBritish actress
- Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dickb. 1983USAmerican operatic soprano, composer and presenter
- Nicole Matthewsb. 1987CAnot in their usual nameCanadian professional wrestler
- Charity Williamsb. 1996CACanadian rugby sevens player
- Charity Crawfordb. 1998USAmerican pornographic actress
- Charity Sillsactress
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 51 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 29K | #1,279 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 97 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 54 | #1,279 |
| ZM Zambia | ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections — candidate results | 2021 | 7 | #38 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1986 | 5 | — |
| GH Ghana | MasakhaNER 2.0 — Zimbabwe (sna) | — | — | — |
| NG Nigeria | WGND 2.0 — Nigeria given names | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Charity mean, and where does it come from?
- from ONFr/OFr charité, 'alms-giving, hospitality' or 'Christian love'; first attested Herluin Caritet 1148–54 Bec (Sx) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- Is Charity a male or female name?
- Charity 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 Charity have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 222 thousand people named Charity in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled charity.
- How common is the name Charity?
- In the United States, the national register counted 28,979 people named Charity in 2020, about 1 in 11 thousand residents.
- How common is Charity compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Charity is the 102nd most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
- What are other forms of the name Charity?
- In the etymology graph, Caridad, Charita and Carita are forms of the same name in other languages.
What do you want to know about Charity?
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/charityThe 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, “Charity” — the 102nd most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.