Annette

126,912 people in America carry this name — ranked #443 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Baby Boomers.

Say it uh NEHT

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

AH0 N EH1 T — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 126,912 2020 Census
  • Rank #443 Common
  • Per 100,000 42.0 about 1 in 2,612 people
  • As a surname 283 ranked #73,776 the other way round

What Annette means and where it comes from

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.

Annette through the years

168,948 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1960, with 7,155 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1960s. 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 Annette

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Annette Elizabeth — runs together
  • Annette Emily — runs together
  • Annette Ashley — same opening

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.

Boys or girls: who is called Annette?

0.1% men
126,802 women

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

Spellings of Annette

Annette is how 91% of them spell it — 138,946 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Where in America Annette is thickest on the ground

In New Mexico the name is given 2.4 times as often as it is across the country.

  • New Mexico ×2.4
  • the District of Columbia ×1.6
  • Wyoming ×1.4
  • Michigan ×1.4
  • North Dakota ×1.3

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.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 63.5%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 18.5%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 13.5%
  • Two or more races — 2.2%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.6%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.8%

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.

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

The same name abroad

  • Nan English
  • Ann English
  • Ane Lith
  • Ana Span.|Bohm.|Slov
  • Nani Hungarian
  • Anne Eng.|Fr
  • Anna Gr.|It.|Swed.|Serv
  • Anca Bohemian
  • Panni Hungarian
  • Panna Hungarian
  • Ninon French
  • Nanny English
  • Nanon French
  • Nanna Italian

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Try it Full-Name Estimator

Add a surname and see how many Americans carry the two together.

Open Full-Name Estimator on its own page

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