Teresa

402,455 people in America carry this name — ranked #118 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it tur EE suh

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

T ER0 IY1 S AH0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 402,455 2020 Census
  • Rank #118 Common
  • Per 100,000 133.2 about 1 in 824 people
  • As a surname 428 ranked #52,367 the other way round

Where Teresa comes from and what it means

Greek in origin, reading literally as “carrying ears of corn”.

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 Teresa has been given

415,576 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1961, with 18,947 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.

What goes well after Teresa

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

Better avoided

  • Teresa Lisa — rhymes
  • Teresa Ashley — runs together
  • Teresa Amy — 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

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

Is Teresa used for boys or for girls?

0.1% men
402,053 women

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

Where in America Teresa is thickest on the ground

In West Virginia the name is given 2.3 times as often as it is across the country.

  • West Virginia ×2.3
  • Kentucky ×1.8
  • Tennessee ×1.7
  • North Carolina ×1.7
  • South Carolina ×1.7

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.

Spellings of Teresa

Teresa is how 49% of them spell it — 823,291 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.

Names with the same rhythm as Teresa

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.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 65.7%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 6.5%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 22.6%
  • Two or more races — 2.4%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 2.2%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.6%

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.

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 Greek origin