Wanda
About 282,186 American babies have been named Wanda since 1880, most of them around 1957. In 2025 it ranked 5,917th. About 159,000 Wandas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 69.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Wanda boys named Wanda
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 282,186
- Estimated living today
- 159,000
- Median age today
- 69
- Peak year
- 1957
- Best rank
- 59th
- Rank in 2025
- 5,917th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 281,214 / 972
How old the living Wandas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 282,186 babies given the name since 1880, about 159,000 are alive — 56 in every hundred. Roughly 460 of them are children and 105,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1956 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 Polish
possibly derived from an ethnic term for “a Wend”.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Wandas
- Wanda Landowska (1879–1959)Polish-French harpsichordist
- Wanda Sykes (born 1964)American comedian, writer, actress and voice artist
- Wanda Jackson (born 1937)American singer, songwriter, pianist and guitarist
- Wanda Wasilewska (1905–1964)Polish writer
- Wanda Panfil (born 1959)Polish long distance runner
- Jenny-Wanda Barkmann (1922–1946)Nazi concentration camp guard
- Wanda Vázquez Garced (born 1960)Puerto Rican politician and attorney
- Wanda Hendrix (1928–1981)American actress
People named Wanda with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Wanda is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Wanda is most concentrated in Oklahoma (3.4×), Arkansas (3.1×), Kentucky (2.9×), West Virginia (2.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1957
The most popular girls’ names the year Wanda peaked:
Wanda elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poland girls | Wanda | 4,806 birth registrations | 48th |
| France girls | Wanda | 3,885 | 149th |
| Switzerland girls | Wanda | 117 | 737th |
| England and Wales girls | Wanda | 113 | 2,286th |
| Scotland girls | Wanda | 8 | 444th |
| Ireland girls | Wanda | 3 | 401st |
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.
Wanda: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Wanda | 108 | 0.009% | 543rd |
| French girls | Switzerland | Wanda | 8 | 0.002% | 443rd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Wanda | 1 | 0.002% | 152nd |
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, Wanda is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 40 of them.
Wanda: rank by region
In 2025, Wanda was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Wanda | 50 | 46 |
| Kujawsko-Pomorskie | Wanda | 54 | 26 |
| Lubelskie | Wanda | 52 | 23 |
| Lubuskie | Wanda | 56 | 10 |
| Łódzkie | Wanda | 44 | 39 |
| Małopolskie | Wanda | 45 | 75 |
| Mazowieckie | Wanda | 39 | 156 |
| Opolskie | Wanda | 88 | 4 |
| Podkarpackie | Wanda | 68 | 16 |
| Podlaskie | Wanda | 53 | 15 |
| Pomorskie | Wanda | 42 | 59 |
| Śląskie | Wanda | 43 | 78 |
| Świętokrzyskie | Wanda | 59 | 9 |
| Warmińsko-Mazurskie | Wanda | 61 | 14 |
| Wielkopolskie | Wanda | 47 | 70 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Wanda | 69 | 14 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – 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.
Wanda by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 62 | 188th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Wanda 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 | Wanda | 1,641 | 2,046 |
| Finland girls | Wanda | 53 | 84 |
| the Netherlands boys | Wanda | — | 15 |
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 Wanda lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 268 women called Wanda 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Araba/Álava | Wanda | 5 | 0.029 | 1,849 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Wanda | 13 | 0.023 | 2,726 |
| Cantabria | Wanda | 7 | 0.023 | 1,659 |
| Palmas, Las | Wanda | 13 | 0.022 | 3,077 |
| León | Wanda | 5 | 0.022 | 1,822 |
| Málaga | Wanda | 18 | 0.020 | 2,209 |
Listed in 14 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 38 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Wanda 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.