Blanca

91,179 people in America carry this name — ranked #584 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Millennials.

Say it BLAHNG kuh

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

B L AA1 NG K AH0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 91,179 2020 Census
  • Rank #584 Familiar
  • Per 100,000 30.2 about 1 in 3,635 people
  • As a surname 517 ranked #44,679 the other way round

The meaning and origin of Blanca

Teutonic in origin, reading literally as “white”.

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.

How often Blanca has been given

25,119 babies were given this name since 1910. The busiest year was 1990, with 673 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1990s. 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.

What goes well after Blanca

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

Better avoided

  • Blanca Barbara — same opening
  • Blanca Ashley — runs together
  • Blanca Amanda — 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

Blanca has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Millennials.

Boys or girls: who is called Blanca?

0.2% men
90,984 women

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

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 1.1%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 98.4%

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.

Names with the same rhythm as Blanca

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

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

How Blanca is spelled

Blanca is how 33% of them spell it — 276,073 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.

Full names people carry

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.

Where in America Blanca is thickest on the ground

In Texas the name is given 3.6 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Texas ×3.6
  • California ×3.1
  • Arizona ×2.3
  • New Mexico ×1.5
  • Illinois ×1.2

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.

Try it Adult Height

Open Adult Height 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 Teutonic origin