Alma
Meaning
probably inspired by Latin almus, meaning nourishing
One Alma, two histories
Latin · Probably inspired by Latin almus, meaning nourishing.
Spanish · The Spanish word alma, soul, also supports its use as a virtue name.
The story
Alma is one of the ledger's true vintage giants: about 158,500 American girls across the record, with a crest of 30,800 in the 1920s and five-figure decades from the 1890s through the 1940s. The root is read as the Latin almus, nourishing, the word inside alma mater, and Spanish gave it a second meaning that needs no translation: alma is the soul itself. The long taper ran seven decades to about 4,000 in the 2010s, and this decade holds 3,800 so far with years to run, the flattest stretch of the whole fade. Grandmother-era giants have made this turn before in our records, Elsie and Vera among them, each in its own time. A soul in Spanish, a nourisher in Latin, five generations deep in the American record: Alma has nothing left to prove and a record worth watching.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Alma peaked in the 1890s and the 1900s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
946 people · the #8,614 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 200,000 · median age 71
Among people named Alma living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1940s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 41 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Alma deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Alma truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Alma fits with your family’s names and surname.
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