Sandra
Masculine · “defender of men”
Sandra is given to girls far more often — 875,531 girls against 2,692 boys since 1880. See Sandra as a girl name
Sandra is an Italian cut that English adopted and Italy largely dropped. It began as the tail end of Alessandra, was a familiar form there rather than a name, and then English-speaking countries took it as a full name and ran it to the top of their lists while Italy went back to the long version.
How old is the name Sandra?
Sandra first appears in US birth records in 1933 — 92 years ago. The typical Sandra alive today was born around 1959, making them about 66 years old. About 1,900 people named Sandra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Sandra most popular?
Sandra peaked in 1943, reaching #615 nationally. See the whole 1943 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Alexandra to Sandra
The story of Sandra
Alessandra and Alexandra are the same name written by two spelling systems — Italian doubles the s and drops the x, which it does not use; Latin and English keep the x. Both are the feminine of a name that goes back to Macedon. The short form Sandra existed in Italian for centuries as an everyday address, and English-speaking countries met it in the twentieth century, took it as a name in its own right, and gave it to enormous numbers of children in a very short period. That is the second time in this family that a familiar form has escaped: Sandy did the same thing in Scotland four hundred years earlier.
Meaning
defender of men
The Greek compound behind Alexandra is unusually clear: a verb about defending and the word for men. The cut keeps the second half and the sense comes through with it.
How the name formed
- Alexandra
- Alessandra
- Sandra
Related forms: Sandra · Sandra · Sandra · Alexandra
Pronouncing Sandra
SAN-druh
Two syllables with the weight at the front. Italian and German say it the same way, which is why the name traveled so easily.
Nicknames for Sandra
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
- 1933
- Most boys named
- 1943105 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #615reached in 1943
- Change vs 2002
- −30.0%7 in 2004, from 10
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.
Sandra in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Sandra in Italian — same name
- Sandra in Portuguese — same name
- Sandra in German — same name
- Alexandra in Greek — related form
Sandras among us
people named Sandra 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
Sandra 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 spelled and said the same way across English, Italian, German and Portuguese.
- Six letters, two syllables, and no ambiguity of any kind.
- It sits behind one of the oldest and most widely used names in Europe.
- Sandy is a ready short form and a standing name of its own.
- It is one of the most generation-marked names in the language and will place a person in time.
- It reads as a short form to Italian speakers, who will hear it as informal.
- The spelling is recorded for a small number of boys, though it reads overwhelmingly as a girl's name.
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Sandra
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Sandras are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,900 people named Sandra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Sandra in 2025?
- Sandra is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Sandra with classmates?
- Sandra will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More S names
The most-given names starting with S, all years combined.
Steven#271 · Stephen#383 · Samuel#18 · Scott#534 · Sean#489 · Shawn#681 · Stanley#863 · Steve#1609
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Sandra? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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