Selena

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Selena boys named Selena

By the numbers

Total US births

59,944

Estimated living today

57,000

Median age today

24

Peak year

1995

Best rank

91st

Rank in 2025

268th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

59,887 / 57

How old the living Selenas are

born that year still alive today

Of the 59,944 babies given the name since 1880, about 57,000 are alive — 95 in every hundred. Roughly 21,000 of them are children and 1,300 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2001 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

Either a variant of Selina, from Latin Caelīna (“heavenly”), or from Selene, the Ancient Greek goddess of the moon.

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

Notable Selenas

• Selena Gomez (born 1992)American singer and actress
• Selena Royle (1904–1983)American actress
• Selena Piek (born 1991)badminton player
• Séléna Janicijevic (born 2002)French tennis player
• Selena Silver (born 1979)Australian pornographic actress
• Selena Steele (born 1961)American pornographic actress and erotic dancer

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

Where Selena is most common

• CA9,282
• TX6,369
• NY3,464
• FL3,253
• IL2,492
• PA2,087
• GA1,835
• MI1,830
• NC1,813
• OH1,767

Relative to how many babies each state records, Selena is most concentrated in Nevada (2.7×), Arizona (2.3×), New Mexico (2.1×), Florida (1.7×).

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

Names of 1995

The most popular girls’ names the year Selena peaked:

• Jessica
• Ashley
• Emily
• Samantha
• Sarah
• Taylor

All the names of 1995

Selena 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.

Selena: 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, Selena is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.06% of children were given it – 64 of them.

Selena: rank by region

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

In 2025, Selena was given 2 times or more in 6 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Selena appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (120th), Province of Hainaut (153rd), Province of Liège (157th), Province of Flemish Brabant (164th) and Province of Antwerp (243rd).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.

Selena by city

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

Selena 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 – 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 Selena lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 2,583 women called Selena 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 49 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 3 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

• Selma
• Selina
• Selah
• Selene
• Selvin
• Selwyn
• Sela
• Selin
• Selim
• Seldon
• Selby
• Seleste

Selena against another name

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

• Selena vs Selma
• Selena vs Selina
• Selena vs Selah
• Selena vs Selene
• Selena vs Selvin
• Selena vs Selwyn

Compare Selena with a name of your own