Amanda
The story
Amanda comes partly from the ancient masculine Amandus, but its modern history was recreated in seventeenth-century literature from Latin amanda, lovable or worthy of love. Playwright Colley Cibber used it for a character in Love's Last Shift in 1696, and the name entered regular use during the nineteenth century. It became international across English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, and other languages. The US curve has a long low foundation, rises strongly in the 1970s, reaches its unmistakable high point in the 1980s, and then declines through the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. That sharp peak makes Amanda a generational marker, but the Latin construction is centuries older than the fashion. Few names pair their meaning and grammar so neatly: Amanda is literally a form describing someone worthy of love, carried through poetry into everyday family life.
Amanda in song
Te recuerdo Amanda
Víctor Jara (1969)
One of Chile's best-loved songs and among the most covered in Latin America. A woman runs to meet her love for the five minutes of his break at the factory gate. Jara named the two of them, Amanda and Manuel, after his own parents.
Amanda
Boston (1986)
Tom Scholz had this one on tape in 1980, six years before Third Stage finally arrived, and when it did land it became Boston's only number one on the Hot 100.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Amanda peaked in the 1980s.
Popularity in Brazil
495,974 people · the #42 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 410 · median age 23
Among people named Amanda living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1990s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 9,912 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Amanda
Most people given the name Amanda in the United States were born between 1980 and 1999. The Amanda you meet today is most often in her 30s or 40s.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Amanda deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Amanda 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 Amanda fits with your family’s names and surname.
Keep exploring
Does Amanda fit YOUR family?
nametree reads your family’s names and finds the ones that belong. Free, private, no ads.
Add Amanda to your family’s tree →