In 2025, 24 US girls were named Erma, making it the 5,292nd most common girls’ name of the year, up 2,418 places from #7,710 in 2024. That is 10 more than the 14 girls named Erma in 2024. Its best rank for girls was #138, reached in 1911. The most girls given the name in a single year was 1,529, in 1920. For comparison, it was #5,344 in 2015 and #331 in 1950.
Social Security card records list Erma in every one of the 146 years from 1880 to 2025; in 1880 there were 30 babies with the name. In all, 55,187 US babies have been given the name, 99.5% of them girls and 0.4% boys. Its busiest decade was the 1920s, with 14,327 babies named Erma.
Over the 10 years from 2016 to 2025, 191 US girls were named Erma; the busiest of those years was 2025, with 24. In 2025 that was about 1 in 66,969 of the girls in SSA’s list for the year.
Related spellings in the SSA files include Irma (74,021 babies since 1880). Rarer spellings such as Ermelinda and Arma are summarised on this page.
Meaning
Meaning not yet researched.
We publish a meaning only with a cited source and a confidence label, and never generate one. Meanings are being researched for the most common names first.
Wikidata records this spelling as a given name in English. That is where the name is used, not necessarily where it comes from.