Anita

164,324 people in America carry this name — ranked #338 of 923.

A name of the post-war decades.

Say it uh NEE tuh

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

AH0 N IY1 T AH0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 164,324 2020 Census
  • Per 100,000 54.4 about 1 in 2,017 people
  • As a surname 197 ranked #98,501 the other way round

Where Anita comes from and what it means

Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “grace”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Anita name popularity by year

215,041 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1957, with 5,832 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50s 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1950s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Anita

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Anita Ashley — runs together
  • Anita Amy — runs together
  • Anita Anna — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Going quiet

Anita has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Baby Boomers.

Boys or girls: who is called Anita?

0.1% men
164,151 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Where the name Anita is most common in the US

In West Virginia the name is given 1.9 times as often as it is across the country.

  • West Virginia ×1.9
  • the District of Columbia ×1.9
  • Alabama ×1.9
  • Mississippi ×1.9
  • New Mexico ×1.6

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 61.5%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 14.0%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 13.7%
  • Two or more races — 2.5%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 7.4%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.9%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Same syllables and stress as Anita

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 3 syllables, stress on the second

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Try it Compare Two Names

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One of those is not in the census file.

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Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Hebrew origin