Onna
Feminine · “Hebrew Channah”
Lithuanian cannot leave a name uninflected. Every noun in the language takes a case ending, including borrowed personal names, so Anna arrives and becomes Ona, with the -a marking the nominative and changing to -os, -ai and -a as the sentence requires. A name that cannot be declined cannot be used at all.
How old is the name Onna?
Onna first appears in US birth records in 1927 — 98 years ago. The typical Onna alive today was born around 2003, making them about 22 years old. About 600 people named Onna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Onna most popular?
Onna peaked in 1941, reaching #3559 nationally. Today it ranks #8362, 4,803 places below that high. See the whole 1941 chart.
Where it comes from
From channah to Onna
The story of Onna
Lithuanian has seven cases and applies them to everything, which creates a problem with foreign names that most European languages no longer have. A name has to be given a Lithuanian stem and ending before it can appear in a sentence, so foreign names are systematically adapted: Anna becomes Ona, Elizabeth becomes Elzbieta, George becomes Jurgis, and even modern foreign names are respelled and given endings in Lithuanian text. The practice has been legislated over and is contested, since people whose names are altered in official documents object. Latvian does the same. What it produces is a name stock that looks unlike anything else in Europe while consisting largely of the same names as everywhere else, and Ona is one of the plainest examples: two syllables, a Hebrew root, and a grammatical ending.
Meaningscholars disagree
Hebrew Channah, favor or grace
Onna is most likely an American variant of Anna or Ona, from Hebrew channah, favor or grace, through Greek and Latin. Ona is the standard Lithuanian and Latvian form of the same name. Onna is separately the Japanese word for a woman, which is unrelated and almost certainly not the source of the 1941 American peak. Which applies to a given bearer is not recoverable.
How the name formed
- channah
- Anna
- Onna
Related forms: Ona · Ona
Pronouncing Onna
ON-ah
Two syllables, stress on the first, short o. OH-nah with a long o is also heard and is the Lithuanian reading. The doubled n marks the short vowel in the English spelling.
Nicknames for Onna
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
- 1927
- Most girls named
- 201533 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #3559reached in 1941
- Change vs 2024
- +100.0%12 in 2025, 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.
Onna in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Ona in Lithuanian — same name
- Ona in English — spelling variant
Onnas among us
people named Onna are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 133,939 born in 2025 was named Onna
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Onna
- #8362
- Onna on the 2025 chart
- #865
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Onna went to 12 girls in 2025, but Oona and Ona are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 95, which makes it the 865th most-given girls’ name of the year — 7,497 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 16,919 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 133,939 for Onna itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Aza test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Onna's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Aza climbed just as high around 1926, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Aza's path sketches the road Onna is walking now.
Onna 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
Onna beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Onna in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The Hebrew root behind Anna is settled and warm.
- It is short and easy to spell.
- It has a genuine Baltic history alongside the American one.
- Ona with one n is the standard Lithuanian spelling.
- Two vowel readings circulate.
- It is a common word in Japanese, which is a coincidence.
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What they receive
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Onna
Feminine · #8362 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Onnas 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 Onna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Onna?
- Onna is one of 3 recorded spellings. Oona is the more common one — 62 births in 2025 against 12 for Onna.
- How popular is the name Onna in 2025?
- Onna ranks #8362 among US girl names in 2025, with 12 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Onna?
- About 1 in every 133,939 US girls born in 2025 was named Onna — 12 in all.
- Will my child share the name Onna with classmates?
- Onna will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Onna
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lona#8362 · Peggy#8362 · Leda#8362 · Margarette#8362 · Rella#8362 · Evalena#8362 · Vashti#8362 · Nona#8362
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Onna? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Onna and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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