Helena

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Helena

By the numbers

Total US births

40,412

Estimated living today

27,000

Median age today

22

Peak year

2025

Best rank

363rd

Rank in 2025

363rd

First recorded

1880

How old the living Helenas are

born that year still alive today

Of the 40,412 babies given the name since 1880, about 27,000 are alive — 67 in every hundred. Roughly 11,000 of them are children and 3,800 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2003 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Ancient Greek

A Latinate form of Helen.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Helenas

• Helena Bonham Carter (born 1966)British actress
• Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891)Russian occult writer
• Cecilia Helena Payne Gaposchkin (1900–1979)British-born American astronomer
• Helena Paparizou (born 1982)Greek singer
• Princess Helena of the United Kingdom (1846–1923)Member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg
• Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908–1992)Portuguese-French artist
• Helena Rubinstein (1872–1965)Polish-American businesswoman, art collector, and philanthropist
• Helena Christensen (born 1968)Danish model and photographer

People named Helena with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Helena is most common

• NY3,992
• CA3,895
• PA2,553
• TX2,348
• MA1,986
• IL1,503
• NJ1,500
• FL1,379
• OH1,339
• MI1,311

Relative to how many babies each state records, Helena is most concentrated in Massachusetts (2.5×), New Jersey (1.7×), Maryland (1.7×), New York (1.6×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2025

The most popular girls’ names the year Helena peaked:

• Olivia
• Charlotte
• Emma
• Amelia
• Sophia
• Mia

All the names of 2025

Helena elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Helena: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Helena is most concentrated in Basel-Stadt, where 0.17% of children were given it – 62 of them.

Helena: rank by region

In 2025, Helena was given 5 times or more in 4 regions of Belgium.

In 2015, Helena was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Helena was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Helena appears in the lists for Province of East Flanders (Helena, 53rd), Province of Antwerp (Helena, 60th), Brussels-Capital Region (Helena, 65th), Province of Flemish Brabant (Helena, 73rd), Province of Limburg (Helena, 94th), Province of Liège (Héléna, 113th) and Province of West Flanders (Helena, 120th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Helena by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Helena among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

Among boys in the Netherlands this is mostly a middle name: of the 5,255 who carry it, 8 go by it.

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026, the Netherlands on 1 January 2018 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Helena lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 20,589 women called Helena were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Helen
• Helene
• Hellen
• Helga
• Helaine
• Helyn
• Helaina
• Helmer
• Heloise
• Helon
• Helma
• Helana

Helena against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Helena vs Helen
• Helena vs Helene
• Helena vs Hellen
• Helena vs Helga
• Helena vs Helaine
• Helena vs Helyn

Compare Helena with a name of your own