Mena
Mena is a girl's name that peaked in 2008, when it was the 2,773rd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 6,116th. About 1,400 Menas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 19.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Mena boys named Mena
Girls and boys called Mena
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Mena crossed from boys to girls in 2000, and has stayed there for 21 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 22 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,678
- Estimated living today
- 1,400
- Median age today
- 19
- Peak year
- 2008
- Best rank
- 2,773rd
- Rank in 2025
- 6,116th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,517 / 161
How old the living Menas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,678 babies given the name since 1880, about 1,400 are alive — 84 in every hundred. Roughly 630 of them are children and 70 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2006 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.
Notable Menas
- Mena Suvari (born 1979)American actress, fashion designer, model
- Mena Barreto (1874–1933)President of Brazil
People named Mena with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Mena is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Mena is most concentrated in California (6.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2008
The most popular girls’ names the year Mena peaked:
Mena elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Mena | 127 | 2,757th |
| Switzerland girls | Mena | 119 | 592nd |
| France girls | Mena +1 spelling | 50 | 5,021st |
| Ireland girls | Mena | 7 | 635th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Mena | 3 | 440th |
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.
Mena: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Mena | 117 | 0.009% | 421st |
| French girls | Switzerland | Mena | 2 | 0.000% | 824th |
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.
Mena 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.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Mena | 10 | 16 |
A count of people on a register – 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.
Related names
Mena against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.