Lena
- Pronunciation
- [Le-na]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Name Suffix.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Lena
Lena is the short form of multiple longer names: Helena, Magdalena, Eleanor, Selena, and others. The name has been used continuously in Slavic, Scandinavian, and German naming traditions for centuries as a casual diminutive, transitioning from nickname to standalone first name in 20th-century American naming.
The name's most influential modern American bearer is American actress and writer Lena Dunham (born 1986, creator and star of HBO's Girls, 2012–2017, anchoring the name in millennial-era American cultural memory) and American singer Lena Horne (1917–2010, the iconic African-American singer-actress whose career through the 1940s-1980s broke many racial barriers in American entertainment). German-American Lena Olin and Cuban-American Lena Headey also bear the name.
Lena's American climb is part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Sadie and Annie. The name climbed from outside the US top 500 in 1995 to the US top 200 girls' rank by 2014 and the top 200 since. The name's appeal is its compact international elegance — two short syllables, soft consonants, instantly readable across most European languages, and the in-built warm register from the long usage history as a diminutive. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Len and the rare Lenny each occasionally appear; the longer formal forms Helena, Magdalena, or Selena are sometimes used as Lena's official-document version. International forms include Lena (essentially identical across European languages), Lenka (Czech), and the broader Helena/Magdalena/Selena family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Lena
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Lena by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1917 with 3,004 girls named Lena (girl rank #85 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #279 for girls (1,106 US births). That's 194 places below its 1917 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Lena Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Lena the strongest states are Vermont, Pennsylvania, Michigan.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vermont | #94 | 21 |
| 2 | Pennsylvania | #138 | 705 |
| 3 | Michigan | #165 | 490 |
| 4 | District of Columbia | #166 | 47 |
| 5 | Delaware | #171 | 18 |
| 6 | Montana | #172 | 20 |
| 7 | Minnesota | #186 | 285 |
| 8 | New Hampshire | #187 | 56 |
| 9 | North Dakota | #205 | 22 |
| 10 | Connecticut | #208 | 152 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arkansas | #556 | 47 |
| 2 | South Carolina | #536 | 85 |
| 3 | Texas | #478 | 645 |
| 4 | Oklahoma | #457 | 86 |
| 5 | Georgia | #447 | 243 |
| 6 | Mississippi | #444 | 52 |
| 7 | Arizona | #443 | 147 |
| 8 | Louisiana | #430 | 113 |
| 9 | Oregon | #401 | 87 |
| 10 | California | #387 | 862 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Lena in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lina | Light | Female | Romanian |
Looking for names like Lena?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Lena to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Lena against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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