Gemma
Feminine · “Gem”
Gemma is the Latin word for a gem, kept whole and used as a name in Italy since the Middle Ages — a rare case where the word and the name never parted company. It is two beats, front-loaded, easy to say on the first try, and it has been shortened to Gem for as long as English speakers have used it. In the United States it has been on record for well over a century, though its real wave is very recent.
How old is the name Gemma?
Gemma first appears in US birth records in 1904 — 121 years ago. The typical Gemma is a kid of about 7 — this name's wave is very recent. About 25,000 people named Gemma are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Gemma most popular?
Gemma peaked in 2025, reaching #170 nationally. Today it ranks #170, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Where it comes from
From Latin gemma to Gemma
The story of Gemma
Gemma began as an ordinary Latin noun and became a personal name in medieval Italy, where it was given as a term of endearment — the child as the jewel. Its best-known early bearer is Gemma Donati, the Florentine woman who married Dante Alighieri in the late thirteenth century. It gained a second life through Gemma Galgani, an Italian mystic of the late nineteenth century who was canonized in 1940, which carried the name through Catholic families in Italy, Spain and Ireland. English-speaking countries took it up much later, Britain notably so in the second half of the twentieth century, and it reached American parents last of all — helped along by British and British-Chinese actresses who made the pronunciation familiar to anyone with a television.
Meaning
Gem, precious stone
Directly from Latin gemma, which meant both a bud on a vine and a jewel. Italian kept the word unchanged as a given name.
Cultural footprint
Gemma Chan (b. 1982) — Crazy Rich Asians star
Gemma Arterton (b. 1986) — Bond girl turned acclaimed stage actress
Source: Wikidata — the one source on this page that is not an official agency.
How the name formed
- Latin gemma
- Italian Gemma
- Catalan/Spanish Gema
- English Gemma
Related forms: Gemma · Gemma · Gema · Gemma · Gema · Gemma
Pronouncing Gemma
JEM-uh
Soft G, as in gem, in English, Italian and Catalan alike. A hard-G reading (GHEM-ah) is the usual first guess from speakers of languages where G stays hard before E, so expect to correct it now and then.
Nicknames for Gemma
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
- 1904
- Most girls named
- 20251,805 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #170reached in 2025
- Change vs 2023
- +9.1%1,805 in 2025, from 1,655
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.
Gemma in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Gemma in Italian — same name
- Gemma in Catalan — same name
- Gema in Spanish — spelling variant
- Gemma in Dutch — same name
- Gema in Portuguese — spelling variant
- Gemma in Latin — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, New York.
Gemmas among us
people named Gemma are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 890 born in 2025 was named Gemma
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 Antoinette test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Gemma's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Antoinette climbed just as high around 1914, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Antoinette's path sketches the road Gemma is walking now.
Gemma is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Gemma is headed
Gemma should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Gemma beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Gemma in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spells itself from the sound and reads correctly on sight for most English speakers, with no variant spellings competing for attention.
- Transparent meaning — the Latin word for jewel, unchanged — so the sense never needs explaining or defending.
- Works unaltered in Italian, Catalan and Dutch, and needs only one dropped letter in Spanish.
- One established short form, Gem, that has been in use for generations and does not have to be invented.
- Documented as a personal name since medieval Italy, so it arrives with a long record rather than a recent one.
- It rhymes closely with Emma, one of the most-used girls' names of the past few decades. Expect the occasional mishearing on the phone and in classrooms where an Emma is already sitting.
- The soft G is not obvious to everyone. Speakers of Italian aside, people who read it before they hear it sometimes try a hard G, and the correction becomes a small lifelong habit.
- The name is climbing steadily in the US rather than holding flat, so a child born now may meet more Gemmas at twenty than at five — worth knowing if rarity is part of the appeal.
- In Britain and Ireland the name is strongly tied to a particular generation of adults, which can read differently to relatives who grew up there.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Gemma
Feminine · #170 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Gemmas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 25,000 people named Gemma are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Gemma in 2025?
- Gemma ranks #170 among US girl names in 2025, with 1,805 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Gemma?
- About 1 in every 890 US girls born in 2025 was named Gemma — 1,805 in all.
- Will my child share the name Gemma with classmates?
- Gemma will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Gemma
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Blair#169 · Rosalie#171 · Ailani#168 · Vivienne#172 · Skylar#167 · Ruth#173 · Isabelle#166 · Ariella#174
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Gemma? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Gemma and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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