Thecla

given name · Latin script

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

Thecla is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country. Recorded meaning: A female given name from Ancient Greek.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 1.3M(measured from records)
  • NLNetherlands1 in 15K
  • TZTanzania≈1 in 19K

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.

Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)

≈3,100 people, est.

Sources
120 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 15K (inferred from the name graph)

Netherlands

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

A female given name from Ancient Greek.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Thecla 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 Thecla is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
TZ Tanzania≈3,100 est.≈1 in 19K—Thecla12
NL Netherlands1,1451 in 15K1.1KThecla30
NG Nigeria≈1,000 est.≈1 in 206K—Thecla22
US United States2471 in 1.3M246Thecla120
ZA South Africa≈87 est.≈1 in 652K—Thecla7
MY Malaysia≈58 est.≈1 in 559K—Thecla11
GY Guyana81 in 94K8Thecla2

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); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)

Thecla is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium

    Also written Thécla, Thècla

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Thécla

42 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)

Thecla is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • English: contracted form of the Greek name Theokleia , composed of the elements theos god + kleia glory. The name was borne by a 1st-century saint (the first female martyr), who was particularly popular in the Middle Ages because of the lurid details of her suffering recorded in the apocryphal ‘Acts of Paul and Thecla’. Cognate: Scandinavian: Tekla .

    as a word

  • In Latvian, Astainīšu apakšdzimtas ģints

    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)

0500100015002000Thecla, b. 100Thekla, b. 701Thekla, b. 825Thecla Coudenhove-Honrichs, b. 1865Thecla Boesen, b. 1910Thecla Schiphorst, b. 1955

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 18 sources across 13 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 Thecla mean, and where does it come from?
A female given name from Ancient Greek. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
Is Thecla a male or female name?
Thecla 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 Thecla?
In the etymology graph, Tekla and Thekla are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Thecla have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 3.1 thousand people named Thecla in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled thecla.
Where is Thecla most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Thecla is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 15 thousand people — even though Tanzania holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Thecla?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 1,145 people named Thecla, about 1 in 15 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Thecla?

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

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, “Thecla”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Thecla parses inside a full name →