Vanessa — #335 US girls' name

What the Data Says About Vanessa

The Social Security Administration has registered 260,793 babies named Vanessa between 1900 and 2024, spanning 125 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Vanessa currently holds the #335 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1985, when 7,564 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Vanessa performed strongest in the 1980s, accumulating 65,728 births during that ten-year window. Across the 13 decades of recorded activity, Vanessa shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in California, which accounts for 62,953 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Texas and New York. In total, SSA state-level files list Vanessa in 51 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Vanessa in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 260,793 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.