Anne
- Pronunciation
- [Anne]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Prayer
- Origin
- Hebrew
About the Name Anne
Anne descends from the French form of Hannah, ultimately from the Hebrew Channah meaning "grace" or "favor" (see separate entry on Hannah for the broader etymology). The biblical Hannah is the mother of the prophet Samuel (1 Samuel 1–2). The name has been used continuously across English-speaking countries since the medieval period.
Notable bearers include the iconic British queen Anne Boleyn (c. 1501–1536, the iconic second wife of King Henry VIII of England, whose execution sparked the English Reformation); American writer Anne Frank (Annelies Marie Frank, 1929–1945, the iconic German-Jewish-Dutch teenage diarist whose The Diary of a Young Girl 1947 became one of the foundational works of Holocaust literature); American actress Anne Hathaway (born 1982, the iconic American Oscar-winning actress whose career through The Princess Diaries 2001, Les Misérables 2012, and The Devil Wears Prada 2006 made her one of the foundational early-21st-century American screen presences); and the iconic American novelist Anne Rice (1941–2021, the American author of Interview with the Vampire).
Anne held a US top-100 girls' rank from 1880 through 1985 — over a century of consistent American popularity. The name has receded slightly since but remains in steady use today, currently sitting in the US top 300 girls' rank. The name's appeal is its compact one-syllable register, instantly readable, the in-built Hannah-grace etymological register, the strong Anne Frank Holocaust-historical cultural anchor and Anne Hathaway contemporary cultural anchor, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-French-Hebrew and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Annie (alternate, a popular standalone name on its own), Nan, Nanette, and the rare Annette each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Anne (the historical English spelling), Ann (alternate American), and Anna (Italian/German) have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Anna (Italian/German/Polish/Russian), Anne (essentially identical across French/English), Ana (Spanish/Portuguese), Anya (Russian alternate), and the original Hebrew Channah.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Anne
US Popularity History (1903–2025)
Annual US births named Anne by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1959 with 5,745 girls named Anne (girl rank #82 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #619 for girls (472 US births). That's 537 places below its 1959 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 Anne 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 Anne the strongest states are District of Columbia, Alabama, Mississippi.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | District of Columbia | #147 | 35 |
| 2 | Alabama | #157 | 270 |
| 3 | Mississippi | #267 | 110 |
| 4 | Massachusetts | #328 | 165 |
| 5 | Virginia | #393 | 193 |
| 6 | Tennessee | #396 | 173 |
| 7 | South Carolina | #442 | 98 |
| 8 | Connecticut | #449 | 53 |
| 9 | Louisiana | #453 | 100 |
| 10 | Kansas | #483 | 39 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arizona | #897 | 26 |
| 2 | Texas | #838 | 321 |
| 3 | California | #768 | 325 |
| 4 | Florida | #740 | 182 |
| 5 | New York | #680 | 229 |
| 6 | Washington | #668 | 83 |
| 7 | Indiana | #651 | 80 |
| 8 | New Jersey | #632 | 111 |
| 9 | Michigan | #615 | 126 |
| 10 | Wisconsin | #607 | 49 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Anne in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Anne
8 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Anne.
- Anne Bancroft — Movie Actress (1931)
- Anne Boleyn was the second wife of King Henry VIII of England.
- Anne Bradstreet was an English poet who was the first woman to have her works published in Puritan America.
- Anne Frank — Non-Fiction Author (1929)
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh was an American author and aviator.
- Anne Rice — Novelist (1941)
- Anne Sexton was a famous American poet known for her confessional poems.
- Anne Sullivan — Teacher (1866)
Looking for names like Anne?
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 Anne to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Anne 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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