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Helma

Girls' name

Short form of Wilhelmina

Helma has been given to 595 babies in the U.S. since 1880. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1916, with 25 recorded.

Babies named Helma, 1952

1 in 759,000

Helma over time, 1880–2025

Girls
010203018801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Helma: meaning, origin, and history

Short form of Wilhelmina

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Helma means

Helma is a short form of Wilhelmina.

Documented naming usage and pronunciation

Helma is used in German and Dutch.

Another recorded pronunciation is /ˈhɛl.ma/ and /ˈɦɛl.maː/ for Helma.

Meaning behind the documented name family

The name developed through Helma → Wilhelmina → Wilhelmina → Wilhelm → *Wiljahelmaz. The family’s meaning is “will + helmet”, recorded in Proto-Germanic with the source elements wiljô and helmaz.

Origin, language, and formation

Helma is used in Faroese.

Related names and everyday forms

Related names include Wilhelmina.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 595 girls were recorded with the name Helma between 1880 and 1952. Its highest annual count was 25 in 1916; its best national rank was #764 in 1894.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

Wiktionary material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

How common is Helma?

Helma had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 1952, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 1952
1 in 759,000
5 of 3,796,842 births
Among girls only
1 in 371,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 1952
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
526,355 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Helma sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 1952 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 526,355 children born in 1952 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Helma. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Helmas were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Helma was born before 1914 — so the typical Helma is around 111 today.

Median birth year
1914
About 111 years old
Biggest decade
1910s
25.9% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
13.1%
Spread across generations
Recorded since 1950
5
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1910s — 25.9% of all recorded uses (154).

Is Helma rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1916 (25)
Years since peak
109
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
30.4% average annual change
Best rank ever
#764
1894

Spellings of Helma

Helma is not the most common spelling — Helen is, with 27.4% against Helma's 0.02%.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Helma is used

Across 1910–2025, Helma was most concentrated in Wisconsin — about 1 in — girls, against 1 in 533,433 across all states with data.

00 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Wisconsin1 in —

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Helma has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Helma around the world

Where Helma ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • England & Wales
    2018–2018
    #3,985
    in 2018
  • France
    1943–2024
    #4,434
    in 2024
  • Canada
    2020–2020
    #3,347
    in 2020

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics, Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques and Statistics Canada. ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. StatCan data under Statistics Canada Open Licence.

Helma by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#764
1894
Peak year
1916
25 that year
First recorded
1880
Last recorded
1952
All-time count
595
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Helma

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

HelanaHelinaHeliaHelonHeloiseHelemHelmiHelynHelaynaTelmaHelainaZulmaIlmaHellonHelviHelaHelgaBelmaWylmaHellenaHeloisaSulmaValmaPalma

Sibling names for Helma

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Helma

Top names of 1916, Helma's peak yearThe 1910s in fullOther names that peaked in 1894Girls' names starting with HFaroese Girl Names