Wemerson
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Meaning
“Brazilian spelling of Emerson, written with the W the way Brazil hears it”
The story
Wemerson is what happens when Brazil likes an English name enough to respell it. Emerson arrived as an English surname-name, and Brazilian parents tuned the spelling to the local ear, W and all, the same move that produced Jeferson from Jefferson. The census counts 18,118 men named Wemerson: 63 born in the 1960s, 1,312 in the 1970s, 3,033 in the 1980s, 6,253 in the 1990s, 5,025 in the 2000s. The United States, which supplied the original, has never published a single Wemerson, and that is the point: this is an English name that now exists only in Portuguese. W is not even a native letter of the Portuguese alphabet; it was formally readmitted for cases exactly like this. The W is silent about its origins. Brazil is not.
How popular is Wemerson around the world?
Wemerson does not appear in US Social Security baby-name records, which list only names given to at least five babies in a year. There is no popularity curve to chart: a genuinely rare pick. At the 2022 census, 18,118 people in Brazil were named Wemerson, ranked 1,133rd, with a median age of 24.
Wemerson is on the official records of Brazil.
United States
under 5 a year
Wemerson does not appear in US Social Security baby-name records, which list only names given to at least five babies in a year. There is no popularity curve to chart: a genuinely rare pick.
Births with a Social Security record. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration
Brazil
1 in 11,000
At the 2022 census, 18,118 people in Brazil were named Wemerson, ranked 1,133rd, with a median age of 24.
Among people named Wemerson living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1990s than in any other decade.
people alive at the 2022 census, by decade of birth
The census also counted 397 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart. People alive and resident in Brazil at the 2022 census, a living-population count, not births; names under 20 are withheld at source. Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
Not on the record in Spain, Mexico City, Argentina, Puerto Rico, England and Wales, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and Poland: those registries withhold small counts, so rare uses may sit below their floors.
Not on the Chile record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 5 registrations in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the Montevideo record for 1940 to 2011: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years. Not on the France record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 20 births in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the South Australia record for 1944 to 2017: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years. Not on the Austria record for 1984 to 2025: Statistik Austria publishes every first name down to a single birth, so this name was not given there in those years (before 2010 the record covers babies with Austrian citizenship only). Not on Norway’s list: Statistics Norway lists only first names carried by 200 or more living people, so rarer names are not shown.
Keep exploring
The Wemerson deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Wemerson 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 Wemerson fits with your family’s names and surname.
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