# America (first name)

Source: https://namelineage.com/first-name/america/  
Publisher: Name Lineage. US counts from the Social Security Administration; England and Wales counts from the Office for National Statistics; meaning and etymology from Wiktionary. Data updated 2026-11-11.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Usually given to | girls |
| Origin | not recorded |
| Meaning | “son of meurig” |
| Pronunciation | /əˈmɛɹɪkə/, 4 syllables |
| Nicknames | none recorded |
| Variant spellings | Amerika |
| US babies named this | 13,538 since 1880 |
| Boys / girls in the US | 16 / 13,522 (100% girls) |
| Babies in England and Wales | not in the ONS data |

## Etymology

Learned borrowing from New Latin America, feminine Latinized form of the Italian first name of Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512). Amerigo is an Italian name derived from a Germanic language and is etymologically related to Henry and Emmerich. The earliest known use of America for the (South) American continent is on a 1507 map by Martin Waldseemüller; see Naming of the Americas for more. Although this is the most widely accepted derivation, it has also been suggested that it could originate from the name of the Amerrisque mountains in Nicaragua (from Mayan), and another disputed theory is that it derives from the surname of Richard Amerike (1440–1503), whose surname is an anglicised form of Welsh ap Meurig (“son of Meurig”), from Old Welsh Mouric, which could be a rendition of Latin Mauritius (compare Maurice).

## Popularity

The last 15 years of each series. A year is missing when too few babies were given the name for the agency to publish it: five in the US, three in England and Wales.

### United States, girls

| Year | Babies | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 329 | 814 |
| 2012 | 288 | 907 |
| 2013 | 347 | 784 |
| 2014 | 325 | 849 |
| 2015 | 282 | 962 |
| 2016 | 261 | 1,015 |
| 2017 | 193 | 1,236 |
| 2018 | 151 | 1,452 |
| 2019 | 158 | 1,415 |
| 2020 | 127 | 1,632 |
| 2021 | 112 | 1,803 |
| 2022 | 89 | 2,143 |
| 2023 | 97 | 2,020 |
| 2024 | 110 | 1,823 |
| 2025 | 117 | 1,734 |

### United States, boys

| Year | Babies | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| 1915 | 6 | 3,407 |
| 1916 | 5 | 3,916 |
| 1932 | 5 | 3,794 |

## People named America

- America Ferrera, American actress and producer (born 1984)
- America Olivo, American actress and singer
- America Young, American actress

## How to read these numbers

A count is babies registered with that name in that year, not people alive now, so a name common a century ago can have a large total and few recent births.