Gemma
From the Latin for "jewel" or precious stone. In Poland it stays a rarity: only about 80 women carry it, and most Poles will never meet one.
Gemma Pronunciation
Gemma is pronounced GEM-mah (/ˈgɛmma/).
What Gemma means
Where Gemma comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Gemma comes straight from the Latin word gemma, which named two things at once: the swelling bud on a vine before it opens, and a cut precious stone. Roman writers used it for both. The name kept the second sense. It means jewel, precious stone.
Italy carried it first. Gemma Donati married Dante Alighieri in Florence in the 1280s and bore his children, though his verse never names her. Later came Gemma Galgani, an Italian mystic who died on 11 April 1903 and was canonised by Pius XII in 1940. Her feast keeps the day of her death, 11 April. English speakers took the name up in the Victorian period and again in recent decades.
The Polish sense stays near the Latin: kamień szlachetny, klejnot.
Read out from a class register in Poland, Gemma sits apart from the Zuzannas beside it. The name has no Polish diminutive of its own, no softened home form. The word behind it once meant a bud, then a stone polished for a ring.
When Gemma celebrates name day
Gemma appears 2 times in the Polish name day calendar, 1 of them as a main name, the first on 11 April.
The days Polish calendars list this name on. By custom you celebrate one of them, usually the first after your birthday.
Rarer dates. Only the most complete calendars add this name on these days. Most skip them, so hardly anyone celebrates then.
How many people are named Gemma
1 in 278319 women in Poland is named Gemma. 81 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3935 among female names.
Gemma's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 girls were given the name in 2025. It has been stable for a decade.
Gemma as a middle name
Gemma is a first name for 81 women in Poland and a middle name for another 37, a 69/31 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1139th, between Estella (37) and Kadek (37).
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#1137 Catharina37
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#1138 Estella37
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#1139 Gemma37
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#1140 Kadek37
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#1141 Karyna37