Contessa
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A countess, often specifically an Italian countess
A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 13 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/kontɛssa/(machine-generated) Spanish · model-generated
Contessa is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 194K(measured from records)
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 470Kfew records
- NLNetherlands1 in 720K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 244 (measured from records)
- 1 in 194K (inferred from the name graph)
1,712 people, 2020
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)A countess, often specifically an Italian countess
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Contessa 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 | 1,712 | 1 in 194K | 1.7K | Contessa | 244 |
| PH Philippines | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 472K | — | Contessa | 26 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 396K | — | Contessa | 8 |
| NL Netherlands | 24 | 1 in 720K | 24 | Contessa | 6 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈4 est. | ≈1 in 9M | — | Contessa | 10 |
1,712 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; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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)Contessa 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.
In Italian, da Matilde
as a nameDizionario Dei Nomi e Cognomi Italiani
In Italian, forma feminina de Conte, condessa
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In Italian, countess
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Croatian, reg. pov. grofica
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
In Latvian, Grāfiene
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)- Anna Rita Contessab. 1801author (1801-2000)
- Enrico Contessab. 1877ITItalian composer and conductor (1877–1948)
- Emilia Contessab. 1957IDIndonesian actress and singer
- Adam Contessab. 1976former Australian rules footballer
- Gabriele ContessaITdoctoral candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science
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)Evidence
(measured from records)25 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 353 | #57,639 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 334 | #64,360 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 334 | #57,090 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Contessa mean, and where does it come from?
- A countess, often specifically an Italian countess Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Contessa?
- In Spanish /kontɛssa/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Is Contessa a male or female name?
- Contessa is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: United States (Census Bureau, 2020).
- In which country does Contessa have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.7 thousand people named Contessa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled contessa.
- Where is Contessa most common?
- Contessa is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 194 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Contessa?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,712 people named Contessa in 2020, about 1 in 194 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Contessa?
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/contessaThe 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, “Contessa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.