Thelma
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A female given name originating as a coinage
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Thelma is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 1.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 2.7K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 3.2K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Thelma itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 420 (measured from records)
- 1 in 692 (inferred from the name graph)
≈520,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Iceland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled תלמה in BR Brazil.
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)
Literary name, coined in English; origin uncertain
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Thelma is read(measured from records)
Thelma is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- English80%
A female given name originating as a coinage.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish7.9%
Tal vez del griego thelēma, 'voluntad'; nombre de uso moderno, no antiguo.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Thelma 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈520,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | — | Thelma | 10 |
| PH Philippines | #386 | ≈77,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Thelma | 95 |
| US United States | #456 | 53,801 | 1 in 6.2K | 54K | Thelma | 420 |
| BR Brazil | — | 53,549as Telma | 1 in 4K | 60K | תלמה | 7 |
| GB United Kingdom | #469 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | 38 | Thelma | 147 |
| SG Singapore | #301 | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | — | Thelma | 22 |
| IS Iceland | #361 | 507 | 1 in 692 | 507 | Thelma | 36 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Thelma 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 French, Literary name, coined in English; origin uncertain
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, Forme féminine d’Anselme; origine germanique, signifie « protégée du dieu Ans ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
[Ignoto]
as a nameIl grande libro dei nomi per bebè. Significato, origini, curiosità. Oltre 7000 nomi per bambine e bambini Significato,…
English: first used by the novelist Marie Corelli for the heroine of her novel Thelma (1887). She was supposed to be Norwegian, but it is not a traditional Scandinavian name. Greek thel ma (neuter) means ‘wish, (act of) will’, and the name could perhaps be interpreted as a contracted form of this.
as a word
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)
- Thelma Ritterb. 1902USAmerican actress and vaudevillian (1902-1969)
- Thelma Toddb. 1906USAmerican actress (1906-1935)
- Butterfly McQueenb. 1911USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (1911-1995)
- Pat Nixonb. 1912USnot in their usual nameFirst Lady of the United States from 1969 to 1974
- Thelma Carpenterb. 1922USAmerican actress and musician (1922–1997)
- Thelma Barlowb. 1929GBBritish actress
- Thelma Schoonmakerb. 1940USAmerican film editor
- Thelma Houstonb. 1946USAmerican singer (born 1946)
- Thelma Goldenb. 1966USAmerican curator
- Thelma Aoyamab. 1987JPJapanese pop and R&B singer
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 76 sources across 43 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 54K | #853 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 4K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 4K | #3,214 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 2.3K | #5,461 |
| IS Iceland | Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry) | 2026 | 507 | — |
| IS Iceland | Hagstofa Íslands — Given-name frequency by population (2005) | 2005 | 358 | #101 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 99 | #853 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2010 | 36 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 29 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1969 | 5 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 1976 | 3 | #516 |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2007 | — | — |
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
- Where does the name Thelma come from?
- Literary name, coined in English; origin uncertain Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- Is Thelma a male or female name?
- Thelma 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 does the name Thelma mean?
- In English, A female given name originating as a coinage.
- In which country does Thelma have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 520 thousand people named Thelma in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled thelma.
- Where is Thelma most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Thelma is densest in Iceland — about 1 in 692 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- What are other forms of the name Thelma?
- In the etymology graph, Telma is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Thelma?
- In the United States, the national register counted 53,801 people named Thelma in 2020, about 1 in 6.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Thelma compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Thelma is the 301st most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Thelma?
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/thelmaThe 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, “Thelma” — the 301st most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.