Melanie
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From Greek for ‘dark’; associated with a 5th-century Roman saint who gave her wealth to charity
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mɛləɲi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Melanie is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In the Philippines it is the 76th most common given name.
- ATAustria≈1 in 425(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 477
- CHSwitzerland≈1 in 705
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)
- #396 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 595 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 425 (inferred from the name graph)
225,738 people, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
From Greek for ‘dark’; associated with a 5th-century Roman saint who gave her wealth to charity.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Melanie 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 | #261 | 225,738 | 1 in 1.5K | 225K | Melanie | 595 |
| DE Germany | #93 | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 477 | — | Melanie | 292 |
| PH Philippines | #76 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 721 | — | Melanie | 144 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈95,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | — | Melanie | 108 |
| FR France | #88 | ≈92,000 est. | ≈1 in 736 | 133K | Melanie | 373 |
| AT Austria | #79 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 425 | 17K | Melanie | 146 |
| CH Switzerland | #87 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 705 | 28 | Melanie | 127 |
225,738 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; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Melanie 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.
Comes from the Greek word for ‘dark’. A fifth-century Roman saint called Melanie gave all her wealth to charity. Melchior [Mei/seoir] (m) A name of eastern origin, perhaps meaning ‘king’. It was said to have been the name of one of the Magi. In Ireland it was found in the vicinity of Youghal, Co. Cork.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, A female given name from Ancient Greek.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, The dark or black one; Greek
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)
- Melanie Safkab. 1947USAmerican musician (1947–2024)
- Melanie Mayronb. 1952USAmerican actress and director
- Melanie Griffithb. 1957USAmerican actress
- Thandie Newtonb. 1972GBnot in their usual nameEnglish actress (born 1972)
- Melanie Brownb. 1975GBBritish singer and television personality
- Melanie Lynskeyb. 1977NZNew Zealand actress (born 1977)
- Rebel Wilsonb. 1980AUnot in their usual nameAustralian actress, writer, and producer
- Mélanie Thierryb. 1981FRFrench actress and model
- Mélanie Laurentb. 1983FRFrench actress, model, director and writer
- Melanie Martinezb. 1995BRMexican-American singer-songwriter
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 104 sources across 58 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 225K | #248 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 17K | #263 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 2.1K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2023 | 420 | #3,112 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 276 | #248 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present) | 2024 | 22 | #268 |
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 Melanie mean, and where does it come from?
- From Greek for ‘dark’; associated with a 5th-century Roman saint who gave her wealth to charity. Recorded by Irish first names.
- What are other forms of the name Melanie?
- In the etymology graph, Melinda, Melina and Mindy are forms of the same name in other languages; Mel is a recorded short or pet form.
- In which country does Melanie have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 226 thousand people named Melanie, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled melanie.
- Is Melanie a male or female name?
- Melanie 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.
- How common is the name Melanie?
- In the United States, the national register counted 225,738 people named Melanie in 2020, about 1 in 1.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Melanie compared with other names?
- In the United States, Melanie is the 261st most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Melanie?
- A machine transcription gives /mɛləɲi/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Melanie?
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/melanieThe 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, “Melanie” — the 261st most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.