Lena

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Lena boys named Lena

By the numbers

Total US births

146,805

Estimated living today

53,000

Median age today

33

Peak year

1917

Best rank

85th

Rank in 2025

279th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

146,479 / 326

How old the living Lenas are

born that year still alive today

Of the 146,805 babies given the name since 1880, about 53,000 are alive — 36 in every hundred. Roughly 19,000 of them are children and 12,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1992 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

The female name is from the Scandinavian, German and Russian pet form of Helena, Magdalena and Yelena (also spelled Elena).

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

Notable Lenas

• Lena Meyer-Landrut (born 1991)German singer
• Lena Headey (born 1973)British actress
• Lena Horne (1917–2010)American singer, actress, dancer and activist
• Lena Dunham (born 1986)American writer, director, actress, and producer
• Lena Olin (born 1955)Swedish stage actress, film actress, beauty pageant contestant, actress
• Lena Katina (born 1984)Russian singer, member of the duo t.A.T.u
• Lena Belkina (born 1987)Ukrainian singer
• Lena Philipsson (born 1966)Swedish female pop and schlager singer

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

Where Lena is most common

• NY9,663
• TX6,939
• PA6,894
• CA6,499
• NC5,117
• IL4,434
• OH4,095
• LA3,859
• GA3,838
• KY3,672

Relative to how many babies each state records, Lena is most concentrated in Mississippi (2.1×), West Virginia (2.0×), Louisiana (1.9×), Kentucky (1.9×).

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

Names of 1917

The most popular girls’ names the year Lena peaked:

• Mary
• Helen
• Dorothy
• Margaret
• Ruth
• Mildred

All the names of 1917

Lena 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.

Lena: 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, Lena is most concentrated in Nidwalden, where 0.66% of children were given it – 59 of them.

Lena: rank by region

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

In 2024, Lena was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

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

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Lena appears in the lists for Province of Limburg (Lena, 10th), Province of Flemish Brabant (Lena, 14th), Province of West Flanders (Lena, 30th), Province of Hainaut (Léna, 30th), Province of Antwerp (Lena, 31st), Province of Walloon Brabant (Léna, 32nd), Province of Luxembourg (Léna, 35th), Province of Liège (Léna, 41st), Province of Namur (Léna, 42nd), Province of East Flanders (Lena, 53rd), Brussels-Capital Region (Lena, 74th), Province of Liège (Lena, 91st) and Province of Hainaut (Lena, 187th).

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.

Lena by city

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

Lena 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.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – 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 Lena lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 2,147 women called Lena 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 43 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 9 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Lenora
• Lenore
• Lennon
• Lennox
• Lenard
• Lenny
• Lennie
• Len
• Lenna
• Lenox
• Lenwood
• Leni

Lena against another name

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

• Lena vs Lenora
• Lena vs Lenore
• Lena vs Lennon
• Lena vs Lennox
• Lena vs Lenard
• Lena vs Lenny

Compare Lena with a name of your own