Minda
Feminine · “love”
Minda is a genuine Yiddish name, not only the tail of a longer English one. It descends from a medieval German word for love, the same word that named the poet-singers of the German courts, and it traveled through Yiddish into American registers with families who had been using it for centuries before anybody thought of it as short for anything.
How old is the name Minda?
Minda was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Minda alive today was born around 1963, making them about 62 years old. About 1,200 people named Minda are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Minda most popular?
Minda peaked in 1880, reaching #738 nationally. See the whole 1880 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Minne, a Middle High German word for love to Minda
The story of Minda
Minne was the German word for love as the courts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries understood it: not affection but a whole literary and social system, with rules, conventions and an enormous body of song attached. The poets who wrote and performed that song are called Minnesinger, and their manuscripts are among the most beautiful objects surviving from the period. The word went out of ordinary use as the fashion passed, but it stayed in names, and Yiddish, which took a great deal of its stock from medieval German, kept it. That is a common pattern worth knowing: a language that borrows heavily at one moment freezes what it borrowed, so Yiddish preserves German words that German itself has let go of, and a name can be the last place a word survives.
Meaningscholars disagree
love
The Yiddish name is usually derived from Minne, a Middle High German word meaning love in the courtly sense, through the pet form Mindel. That derivation is the standard one and is well supported, though Yiddish names frequently have more than one line of descent and this one may also have served as a household form of longer names. Where a family took it from another language entirely, the reading will be different, and the spelling does not record which.
How the name formed
- Minne, a Middle High German word for love
- Mindel and Minda as Yiddish names
- Carried to America by Yiddish-speaking families
- Also used as a short form of longer English names
Related forms: Mindel · Minna
Pronouncing Minda
MIN-duh
Two syllables, stress on the first. Yiddish gives it much the same shape. It is not a shortening of Melinda or Belinda in the families that brought it, whatever it may be in the families that did not.
Nicknames for Minda
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
- 195138 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #738reached in 1880
- Change vs 2015
- −16.7%5 in 2023, from 6
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.
Minda in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Mindel in Yiddish — related form
- Minna in German — related form
Mindas among us
people named Minda are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Minda sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It is short, easily said and impossible to mispronounce.
- It has a real and traceable history in a specific community, which most four-letter names do not.
- Min and Mindy give it a very old and a very modern option side by side.
- It will be assumed to be short for something, and for many American families it was.
- Mindy is the far more familiar form and this one will be converted into it.
- It is rare enough now that it will need spelling out most of the time.
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Minda
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Mindas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,200 people named Minda are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Minda in 2025?
- Minda is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Minda with classmates?
- Minda will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More M names
The most-given names starting with M, all years combined.
Mary#125 · Margaret#112 · Michelle#465 · Melissa#419 · Maria#87 · Martha#712 · Marie#617 · Mildred#1962
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Minda? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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