Melinda
Feminine · “honey”
Melinda is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 135,822 girls against 337 boys since 1880.
Melinda is an eighteenth-century construction — honey plus a fashionable ending. English poets and playwrights of the period built names this way on purpose, and several of them stuck.
How old is the name Melinda?
Melinda was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Melinda alive today was born around 1972, making them about 53 years old. About 123,000 people named Melinda are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Melinda most popular?
Melinda peaked in 1973, reaching #72 nationally. Today it ranks #1981, 1,909 places below that high. See the whole 1973 chart.
Melinda appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From mel to Melinda
The story of Melinda
Eighteenth-century English literature produced a small crop of deliberately constructed names ending in -inda — Belinda, Clarinda, Lucinda, Dorinda, Melinda — several of which appear first in poems and plays and then in parish registers. Melinda entered ordinary English use in that period and rose sharply in twentieth-century America, peaking in the mid-1960s.
Meaningscholars disagree
honey
The usual reading takes the first element from the Greek meli or the Latin mel, 'honey', with the -inda ending borrowed from Belinda and Lucinda. Whether the coiner intended the honey sense is not recorded. A competing account treats the whole name as an elaboration of Linda with a decorative first syllable.
How the name formed
- mel
- Melinda
Related forms: Melinda · Melinda · Malinda
Pronouncing Melinda
muh-LIN-duh
Three syllables, stress in the middle. Hungarian says MEH-lin-da with the stress at the front.
Nicknames for Melinda
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
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 19693,988 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #72reached in 1973
- Change vs 2022
- +16.9%97 in 2025, from 83
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.
Melinda in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Melinda in Hungarian — same name
- Melinda in Spanish — same name
- Malinda in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Melindas among us
people named Melinda are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 16,570 born in 2025 was named Melinda
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 Dianne test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Melinda's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Dianne climbed just as high around 1945, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Dianne's path sketches the road Melinda is walking now.
Melinda 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
Where Melinda is headed
Melinda should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium 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.
Melinda beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Melinda in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It belongs to a documented and coherent family of eighteenth-century literary coinages.
- Mindy and Mel are two short forms at very different registers.
- Three syllables with a strong middle, a rhythm that carries well.
- The honey reading is a reconstruction of a coinage rather than a recovered etymology.
- It is closely dated to the middle of the twentieth century in American records.
Nobody names a baby alone.
Put Melinda to the vote.
Add it to a family vote or a couple’s swipe deck — the other person gets one card, a simple answer and room to say why. No app, no account for them.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Melinda
Feminine · #1981 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Melindas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 123,000 people named Melinda are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Melinda in 2025?
- Melinda ranks #1981 among US girl names in 2025, with 97 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Melinda?
- About 1 in every 16,570 US girls born in 2025 was named Melinda — 97 in all.
- Will my child share the name Melinda with classmates?
- Melinda will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Melinda
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Reva#1981 · Shanaya#1981 · Elana#1981 · Elisheva#1981 · Charity#1981 · Janyla#1981 · Sequoia#1981 · Theia#1981
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Melinda? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Melinda and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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Weighing a whole shortlist? Add the rest in the builder, or settle it with a bracket.
Cast your vote
Which one would you pick?
Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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