Anjela
Feminine · “messenger”
Angela was made from a man's name. Italian had Angelo first — an ordinary given name meaning a messenger — and the feminine was built on it afterward, which is the usual direction and not the one most people assume for a name this soft. Anjela replaces the g with a j, which says the same thing and leaves no room for a reader to guess wrong.
How old is the name Anjela?
Anjela first appears in US birth records in 1964 — 61 years ago. The typical Anjela alive today was born around 1996, making them about 29 years old. About 600 people named Anjela are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Anjela most popular?
Anjela peaked in 1970, reaching #4246 nationally. Today it ranks #14942, 10,696 places below that high. See the whole 1970 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From angelos to Anjela
The story of Anjela
Angelo was in Italian use from the Middle Ages and Angela followed; both spread across Catholic Europe, and a sixteenth-century Italian saint who founded a teaching order for girls kept the feminine prominent. English-speaking America took Angela up in the twentieth century and made it very popular indeed. The j-spelling belongs to the respelling wave that follows any widely used name: English writes this sound with a g before e and with a j everywhere else, and the j is the letter that never lies.
Meaning
messenger
From the Greek angelos, a messenger — an ordinary word for someone carrying news, used of runners and heralds. It acquired wings when the Greek translators of the Hebrew scriptures used it for divine messengers, and English inherited both the word and the wings.
How the name formed
- angelos
- Angelo
- Angela
- Anjela
Related forms: Angela · Ángela · Angela · Anzhela
Pronouncing Anjela
AN-juh-luh
Three syllables, stress on the first. The j says exactly what the g says before an e in English, so the spelling is a clarification rather than a change. Russian writes the same sound with a two-letter combination, which is why its version looks longer.
Nicknames for Anjela
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1964
- Most girls named
- 200531 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #4246reached in 1970
- Change vs 2024
- −28.6%5 in 2025, from 7
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Anjela in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Angela in Italian — same name
- Ángela in Spanish — same name
- Angela in German — same name
- Anzhela in Russian — same name
Anjelas among us
people named Anjela are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 321,453 born in 2025 was named Anjela
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Evonna test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Anjela's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Evonna climbed just as high around 1939, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Evonna's path sketches the road Anjela is walking now.
Anjela sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Anjela beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Anjela in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The j removes any doubt about the consonant, which the standard spelling leaves to a rule.
- Angie is available and needs no explanation anywhere.
- The meaning is one word long and has a genuinely good story about how it changed.
- The name is standard across Catholic Europe.
- Angela is the standard spelling and will be substituted on nearly everything.
- The change is inaudible, so the letters have to be dictated each time.
- It belongs to a mid-century American generation and carries that flavor.
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What they receive
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Anjela
Feminine · #14942 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Anjelas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Anjela are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Anjela in 2025?
- Anjela ranks #14942 among US girl names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Anjela?
- About 1 in every 321,453 US girls born in 2025 was named Anjela — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Anjela with classmates?
- Anjela will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Anjela
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Hester#14942 · Lyda#14942 · Zula#14942 · Zona#14942 · Ula#14942 · Belva#14942 · Lucetta#14942 · Leala#14942
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Anjela? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Anjela and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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