Vanessa
About 262,606 American babies have been named Vanessa since 1900, most of them around 1985. In 2025 it ranked 377th. About 251,000 Vanessas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 35.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Vanessa boys named Vanessa
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 262,606
- Estimated living today
- 251,000
- Median age today
- 35
- Peak year
- 1985
- Best rank
- 42nd
- Rank in 2025
- 377th
- First recorded
- 1900
- Girls / boys
- 261,622 / 984
How old the living Vanessas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 262,606 babies given the name since 1900, about 251,000 are alive — 96 in every hundred. Roughly 33,000 of them are children and 18,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1990 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin a coined name
as a pseudonym for a lady friend named Esther Vanhomrigh (or Van Homrigh), an Irish woman of Dutch descent, by taking the Dutch preposition van from her surname and adding -essa (perhaps influenced by the first syllable of Esther).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Vanessas
- Vanessa Hudgens (born 1988)American actress and singer
- Vanessa Paradis (born 1972)French singer, model and actress
- Vanessa Redgrave (born 1937)British actress and activist
- Vanessa Kirby (born 1988)British actress
- Vanessa-Mae (born 1978)British violinist
- Vanessa Williams (born 1963)American actress, singer and former Miss America
- Vanessa Nakate (born 1996)Ugandan climate change activist
- Vanessa Carlton (born 1980)American singer-songwriter
People named Vanessa with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Vanessa is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Vanessa is most concentrated in California (2.4×), Arizona (2.2×), Nevada (2.1×), New Mexico (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1985
The most popular girls’ names the year Vanessa peaked:
Vanessa elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Vanessa +1 spelling | 80,835 | 13th |
| Italy girls | Vanessa | 14,570 | — |
| Austria girls | Vanessa | 9,233 | 9th |
| Poland girls | Vanessa | 7,326 birth registrations | 61st |
| New Zealand girls | Vanessa | 3,941 | 18th |
| England and Wales girls | Vanessa | 3,747 | 220th |
| Switzerland girls | Vanessa | 3,399 | 6th |
| Ireland girls | Vanessa | 2,122 | 108th |
| Norway girls | Vanessa | 1,234 | 136th |
| Belgium girls | Vanessa | 959 | 140th |
| Scotland girls | Vanessa | 650 | 166th |
| Sweden girls | Vanessa | 178 | 100th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Vanessa | 101 | 163rd |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Vanessa: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Vanessa | 2,909 | 0.234% | 5th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Vanessa | 375 | 0.086% | 30th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Vanessa | 108 | 0.166% | 19th |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Vanessa | 7 | 0.188% | 2nd |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Vanessa is most concentrated in Schwyz, where 0.40% of children were given it – 139 of them.
Vanessa: rank by region
In 2024, Vanessa was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Vanessa | 532 | 9 |
In 2019, Vanessa was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Vanessa | 10 | 1 |
In 2025, Vanessa was given 2 times or more in 13 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Vanessa | 234 | 2 |
| Kujawsko-Pomorskie | Vanessa | 102 | 6 |
| Lubelskie | Vanessa | 124 | 3 |
| Lubuskie | Vanessa | 100 | 4 |
| Łódzkie | Vanessa | 122 | 6 |
| Małopolskie | Vanessa | 232 | 2 |
| Mazowieckie | Vanessa | 175 | 8 |
| Opolskie | Vanessa | 95 | 3 |
| Podkarpackie | Vanessa | 110 | 6 |
| Pomorskie | Vanessa | 135 | 6 |
| Śląskie | Vanessa | 146 | 7 |
| Wielkopolskie | Vanessa | 139 | 7 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Vanessa | 131 | 4 |
In 2018, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Vanessa appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (332nd).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Vanessa by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 83 | 161st |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Vanessa among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Vanessa | 2,868 | 3,871 |
| Finland girls | Vanessa | 2,186 | 3,373 |
| the Netherlands boys | Vanessa | — | 7 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Vanessa lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 30,544 women called Vanessa were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palencia | Vanessa | 163 | 2.040 | 104 |
| Tarragona | Vanessa | 843 | 1.928 | 95 |
| Coruña, A | Vanessa | 1,106 | 1.871 | 109 |
| Asturias | Vanessa | 966 | 1.821 | 108 |
| Soria | Vanessa | 80 | 1.804 | 116 |
| Barcelona | Vanessa | 5,441 | 1.788 | 99 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Vanessa against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.