Name Awesome

Nneka

Girls' name

Mother is greater

Nneka has been given to 1,178 babies in the U.S. since 1970. 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 1992, with 53 recorded.

Babies named Nneka, 2020

1 in 557,000

Nneka over time, 1880–2025

Girls
020406018801900192019401960198020002020

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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Nneka: meaning, origin, and history

Mother is greater

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Nneka means

Nneka means “mother is greater”.

Documented naming usage and pronunciation

Nneka is used in Igbo.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 1,178 girls were recorded with the name Nneka between 1970 and 2020. Its highest annual count was 53 in 1992; its best national rank was #1,913 in 1972.

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.

How common is Nneka?

Nneka had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2020, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2020
1 in 557,000
6 of 3,342,313 births
Among girls only
1 in 269,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2020
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
386,120 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Nneka 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 2020 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 386,120 children born in 2020 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Nneka. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Nnekas were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Nneka was born before 1989 — so the typical Nneka is around 36 today.

Median birth year
1989
About 36 years old
Biggest decade
1990s
31.5% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
24.3%
Spread across generations
Recorded since 1950
1,178
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1990s — 31.5% of all recorded uses (371).

Is Nneka 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 1992 (53)
Years since peak
33
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
31.5% average annual change
Best rank ever
#1,913
1972

Spellings of Nneka

Nneka is not the most common spelling — Neva is, with 22.3% against Nneka's 1.2%.

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 Nneka is used

Across 1910–2025, Nneka was most concentrated in District of Columbia — about 1 in 50,000 girls, against 1 in 322,634 across all states with data. It was least common in Texas (1 in —).

02 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1District of Columbia1 in 50,000
  2. 2New York1 in 100,000
  3. 3California1 in —
  4. 4Georgia1 in —
  5. 5Illinois1 in —
  6. 6Michigan1 in —
  7. 7New Jersey1 in —
  8. 8Pennsylvania1 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. Nneka has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Nneka around the world

Where Nneka 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
    1996–2022
    #3,971
    in 2022
  • France
    2011–2017
    #7,273
    in 2017

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

Nneka 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
#1,913
1972
Peak year
1992
53 that year
First recorded
1970
Last recorded
2020
All-time count
1,178
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Nneka

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

NnennaMeekaEurekaAnnekaNneomaRebekaMalekaTimekaTemekaTanekaJamekaAnekaMekaNeekaTenekaMiekaLamekaAlekaTameekaErekaDerekaShemekaMaleekaSheneka

Sibling names for Nneka

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 Nneka

Top names of 1992, Nneka's peak yearThe 1990s in fullOther names that peaked in 1972Girls' names starting with NIgbo Girl NamesIgbo Names