Smilla

given name · Latin script

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

Smilla is a given name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in Sweden. In Danish, recorded as a female given name of modern usage.

rarermore common
  • SESweden
  • DKDenmark
  • DEGermany

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

a female given name of modern usage

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

How Smilla is read(measured from records)

Smilla is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.

  • German29%

    weibl. Vom., nach der Titelfigur des dänischen Romans »Fräulein Smillas Gespür für Schnee« (dt. 1994) von P. H0eg; in der

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • Swedish22%

    Smilla är ett litterärt namn, skapat av den danske författaren Peter Høeg i romanen Fröken Smillas känsla för snö (1992, filmatiserad 1997). Till grund ligger ett grönländskt kvinnonamn, Millaaraq ’en som smånynnar’, där förleden bytts ut mot Smilla-, innehållande smil, det danska ordet för ’leende’.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • Danish13%

    a female given name of modern usage

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

  • French9.5%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Smilla in French.

  • English8.5%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Smilla in English.

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Recorded in:

No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.

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)

Smilla is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • [Ignoto]

    as a nameIl grande libro dei nomi per bebè. Significato, origini, curiosità. Oltre 7000 nomi per bambine e bambini Significato,…

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)

199020002010Smilla Luuk, b. 1997Smilla Szalkai, b. 2001Smilla Schadewald, b. 2002Smilla Vallotto, b. 2004Smilla Sundell, b. 2004Smilla Kristensen, b. 2004Smilla Holmberg, b. 2006

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 26 sources across 15 countries.

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 Smilla mean, and where does it come from?
a female given name of modern usage Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
Is Smilla a male or female name?
Smilla 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 Smilla have the most bearers?
Smilla is most frequently recorded in Sweden.

What do you want to know about Smilla?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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

The same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Smilla”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Smilla parses inside a full name →