Holiday Calendar

National Theresa Day

Next celebratedTuesday, April 13, 2027

Two of the four women ever named a Doctor of the Church carried this name, and Mother Teresa borrowed it from one of them in 1928, having been baptised Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu. April 13 is the day for everyone else who carries it.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEApril 13
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The name is documented; the day is not.

No founder, organisation, proclamation or founding announcement for National Theresa Day has been located. The observance circulates through holiday listing sites, and its origin is undocumented.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

Ten days went missing the night Teresa of Ávila died

Teresa of Ávila died at Alba de Tormes on 4 October 1582. The next day was 15 October, and the dates in between never happened. National Theresa Day carries a name with that gap inside its history.

Much of Catholic Europe was adopting the Gregorian calendar that autumn, and the correction advanced the calendar ten days after 4 October. Her feast falls on 15 October, the day that directly followed the one she died on.

The day itself is a much thinner thing, with no founder and no founding document anyone has traced. The name is what carries it.

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ORIGINS

Theresa Day history

INTRODUCTION

The name enters the record in the 4th century as Therasia, borne by the Spanish wife of Saint Paulinus of Nola. Nothing earlier has been traced.

For the next thousand years it barely moved. Through the Middle Ages it was mainly confined to Spain and Portugal. Something had to carry it out.

CHAPTER 01

The nun who moved it

Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada was born at Ávila in Castile on 28 March 1515. She became the reformer of Carmel, founding convents and monasteries across Spain and writing several spiritual books.

Her fame did the work. After the 16th century the name spread out of Iberia into the rest of the Christian world. She was beatified in 1614 and canonised in 1622.

CHAPTER 02

A crown the law would not give her

By the 18th century the name had reached the top of Europe. Maria Theresa was born in Vienna on 13 May 1717, daughter of the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI. He was the last surviving prince of his line, and he issued the Pragmatic Sanction so that a daughter could inherit the Habsburg domains.

It worked, and it cost her a war. The War of the Austrian Succession broke out on her accession in 1740, and she ruled Austria, Hungary and Bohemia until 1780. The imperial crown itself stayed closed to women, so she secured it for her husband.

CHAPTER 03

A day with no author

National Theresa Day has none of that behind it. A Federal Register search for the exact phrase returns no documents.

The earliest archived listing of the day was captured in August 2022. That sets a floor on when it was circulating rather than a date it began. The name it borrows had been in the record for well over a thousand years by then.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Theresa Day

LANGUAGE

Thérèse in French, Teréz in Hungarian, Toiréasa in Irish

French made it Thérèse, German Theresia, Hungarian Teréz and Irish Toiréasa. English added its own short forms instead, among them Tess, Terri and Tracy.

POLITICS

The name reached the top of British government

Theresa May was elected Conservative MP for Maidenhead in May 1997 and became Home Secretary in May 2010. She was Prime Minister from 13 July 2016 to 24 July 2019.

MEASURE

The name has an unbroken American paper trail

The Social Security Administration lists a count for it in all 146 annual files it publishes, from 1880 through 2025. The name has never once been absent from that record.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Theresa Day by the Numbers

404,613
Theresas in Social Security data, 1880-2025
11,960
Theresas born in 1961, the peak year
#32
Highest US girls' rank, set in 1956
131
Straight years in the top 1,000, ending 2010
136
Theresas in the 2025 US data

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Theresa Day

Munich's Oktoberfest field is named after a bride

Crown Prince Ludwig married Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen on 12 October 1810, and five days of celebration ended with a horse race on the grassland outside Munich's gates. The city named that fairground Theresens-Wiese in her honour, and between 5 and 7 million people have come to it every year since visitor statistics were first recorded in 1980.

Two of the Church's four female Doctors carry the name

Only four women have ever been named a Doctor of the Church. Teresa of Ávila was the first, proclaimed on 27 September 1970, and Thérèse of Lisieux followed on 19 October 1997.

Mother Teresa was not born with the name

She was baptised Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu in Skopje in 1910. Joining the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland in 1928, she received the name Sister Mary Teresa after St Thérèse of Lisieux.

The patron saint of pilots died at 24

Thérèse of Lisieux died at Lisieux on 30 September 1897, aged 24, and was canonised in 1925. She is a patron saint of missionaries, florists, pilots and priests.

Thérèse's parents were the first spouses canonised together

Louis Martin and Marie-Azélie Guérin, the parents of Thérèse of Lisieux, were canonised as a couple by Pope Francis in 2015. No married couple had been canonised together before.

MYTH VS FACT

Common Misconceptions

The myth

The name Theresa means harvester.

The truth

Reference works decline to settle it. Behind the Name calls the meaning uncertain and offers three possibilities: the Greek theros, meaning summer; therizo, meaning to harvest; or the Greek island of Therasia. The Online Etymology Dictionary hedges too, tracing the name apparently to the same island and giving no harvest sense at all.

The myth

April 13 is the traditional Theresa name day.

The truth

In much of Catholic Europe the traditional Teresa name day is a saint's feast in October, not a date in April. Why the April observance sits where it does is undocumented.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Theresa Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Write to the Theresas in your life

Send a note rather than a post. Ask which spelling they were given, and whether anyone in the family chose it for them.

LOOK

Look up the name in Social Security's records

Find the figure for the year a Theresa you know was born. The agency lists each spelling as its own entry, so search the exact one before you draw any conclusion.

READ

Read one of Teresa of Ávila's books

The Way of Perfection appeared in 1583 and The Interior Castle in 1588. Britannica records that both are still widely read.

PUT

Put the October name days in the calendar

The Church keeps 1 October for Thérèse of Lisieux and 15 October for Teresa of Ávila. Add whichever fits, and the name gets a second date with a long paper trail behind it.

WALK

Walk the Theresienwiese in Munich

The Oktoberfest grounds still carry the name of Princess Therese, the 1810 bride they were christened for. If you are in Munich, you can walk across the field itself.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Theresa Day?

1 / 9

What happened to the calendar the day after Teresa of Ávila died in 1582?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no proclamation or statute located and no Federal Register record, so April 13 is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

13sources
7primary records
4independently dated
Primary records
US Social Security Administration2026
National baby names data set (names.zip, yob1880 to yob2025)
The agency's own year-by-year counts of every US given name since 1880.
View source
The Holy See1997-10-19
Divini Amoris Scientia, apostolic letter of John Paul II
The act naming Thérèse of Lisieux a Doctor of the Universal Church.
View source
The Holy See2003-10-19
Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997), biography
The Vatican's life of Mother Teresa, from her baptism in Skopje onward.
View source
City of Munich2023
A foray through the history of the Wiesn (press release 03/2023)
Munich's own account of the 1810 wedding that named the Theresienwiese.
View source
Order of Carmelites
St. Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church
The order's liturgical entry for its reformer, with her dates and feast day.
View source
UK Government
Theresa May, ministerial profile
Official record of her terms as Home Secretary and Prime Minister.
View source
Office of the Federal Register
Federal Register document search API
Full-text search of US federal documents for the observance's exact name.
View source
Additional coverage
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Theresa
The name's uncertain etymology, its first record as Therasia, and its spread.
View source
Online Etymology Dictionary
Theresa: etymology, origin and meaning of the name
Traces the name to Therasia, the Greek name of two volcanic islands.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Gregorian calendar
How the 1582 reform struck ten dates out of the Catholic calendar.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Female Doctors of the Church
The four women given the Church's teaching title, with each proclamation date.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
St. Thérèse of Lisieux
Her dates, canonisation, feast day and patronages, and her parents' canonisation.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Maria Theresa
The Pragmatic Sanction, her reign, and the crown closed to women.
View source
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