Miranda
- Pronunciation
- [Mi-ran-da]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Admirable
- Origin
- Spanish
About the Name Miranda
Miranda descends from the Latin mirandus meaning "admirable" or "to be admired." The name was essentially a literary creation, first used by William Shakespeare in his play The Tempest (c. 1611) where Miranda is the daughter of Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan. The Shakespeare play single-handedly anchored Miranda in early-modern English-language literary tradition.
Notable bearers include American actress Miranda Kerr (born 1983, the iconic Australian Victoria's Secret Angel whose career through 2007–2013 made her one of the foundational early-21st-century international supermodels); American actress Miranda Cosgrove (born 1993, the iconic American actress of Nickelodeon's iCarly 2007–2012); the fictional Miranda Bailey of ABC's Grey's Anatomy (2005–present); American Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona (1966, the Supreme Court decision that established the Miranda warning); and the contemporary American playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda (using Miranda as a surname, born 1980, the American composer-lyricist of Hamilton).
Miranda held a US top-200 girls' rank from 1980 through 2010 and remains in steady use today, currently sitting in the US top 300 girls' rank. The name's appeal is its layered Latin-Shakespearean-literary pedigree combined with three flowing syllables — the in-built admirable etymological register, the strong Shakespeare literary cultural anchor and Miranda Kerr modern fashion-cultural anchor, and the elegant Latinate sophistication. The name reads as both classical-Latin and contemporary American. Common nicknames Mira (back-end shortening, a popular standalone name on its own), Mandi, Randi, and the rare Miri each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Miranda and Mirannda have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Miranda (essentially identical across Spanish/Portuguese/Italian/English), Mirelle (French alternate), and the original Latin mirandus.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Miranda
US Popularity History (1991–2025)
Annual US births named Miranda by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1995 with 5,978 girls named Miranda (girl rank #57 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #656 for girls (437 US births). That's 599 places below its 1995 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Miranda Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Miranda the strongest states are Texas, New Mexico, Florida.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | #233 | 1,434 |
| 2 | New Mexico | #246 | 44 |
| 3 | Florida | #280 | 650 |
| 4 | California | #308 | 1,221 |
| 5 | Nevada | #348 | 53 |
| 6 | Arizona | #365 | 197 |
| 7 | Iowa | #431 | 33 |
| 8 | Kansas | #472 | 34 |
| 9 | Colorado | #481 | 109 |
| 10 | Oklahoma | #483 | 48 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Louisiana | #915 | 16 |
| 2 | Ohio | #798 | 80 |
| 3 | Maryland | #791 | 29 |
| 4 | Massachusetts | #782 | 31 |
| 5 | Alabama | #748 | 42 |
| 6 | Pennsylvania | #747 | 137 |
| 7 | Minnesota | #739 | 45 |
| 8 | Kentucky | #723 | 30 |
| 9 | Georgia | #711 | 135 |
| 10 | Wisconsin | #704 | 57 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Miranda in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Miranda?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Miranda to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Miranda against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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