Regina: Meaning of Baby Name Regina

About the Name Regina

Regina descends from the Latin regina meaning "queen." The name has been used continuously in Italian, Spanish, and Catholic-influenced naming traditions for over a millennium and has additional Marian Catholic associations through the title Regina Caeli ("Queen of Heaven"), one of the four Marian antiphons used in the Catholic liturgy.

Notable bearers include American actress Regina King (born 1971, the iconic American actress whose career through Jerry Maguire, Watchmen, and If Beale Street Could Talk — for which she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar 2018 — made her one of the foundational early-21st-century American screen presences); American actress Regina Hall (born 1970, the American actress of Scary Movie franchise and Girls Trip); and the iconic Mexican-American writer Regina Cortina.

Regina held a US top-200 girls' rank from 1880 through 2000 — over twelve decades of continuous American popularity, anchored partly by Italian-American and Spanish-American naming. The name has receded slightly since but remains in steady use, currently sitting in the US top 300 girls' rank. The name's appeal is its layered Latin-Catholic-Marian-queen pedigree combined with three flowing syllables — the in-built queen etymological register, the strong Regina King Hollywood cultural anchor, and the elegant Latinate sophistication. The name reads as both classical-Catholic and contemporary American. Common nicknames Reggie (the dominant short form, casual and warm), Gina (back-end shortening, a popular standalone name on its own), Reg, and the rare Regi each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Regina and Reginia have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Regina (essentially identical across Italian/Spanish/Portuguese/German), Regine (French/German alternate), Reine (French), and the original Latin regina.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Regina

165

Italian baby names in our dictionary

117

Italian female names

207

6-letter R-names in our dictionary

259

R-female names total

1961–2025

years of US SSA records (37 total)

65,339

total US births named Regina (all years)

US Popularity History (1961–2025)

📈 Rising: Regina climbed 37 places in the US girls ranking over the last 5 years (#432 in 2020 → #395 in 2025).

Annual US births named Regina by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1962 with 5,003 girls named Regina (girl rank #92 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #395 for girls (786 US births). That's 303 places below its 1962 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.

Where in the US Is Regina 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 Regina the strongest states are Texas, Arizona, California.

Strongest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Texas	#111	2,405
2	Arizona	#168	368
3	California	#229	1,423
4	New Mexico	#269	67
5	Colorado	#392	148
6	Illinois	#411	263
7	Nevada	#453	57
8	Iowa	#465	73
9	Oregon	#495	59
10	Kansas	#513	41

Weakest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Florida	#842	141
2	Missouri	#828	28
3	Maryland	#821	46
4	New Jersey	#803	57
5	New York	#802	144
6	Massachusetts	#789	33
7	Minnesota	#789	35
8	North Carolina	#768	101
9	Virginia	#743	32
10	Michigan	#689	102

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Regina in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Gina	Abbreviation Of Names Ending In -Gina.	Female	English
Regan	Regal	Male	Celtic
Reggie	Powerful Ruler	Male	German

Looking for names like Regina?

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.

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Compare Regina to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Regina against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Regina vs Olivia 210,124 births since 2014

Regina vs Emma 202,477 births since 2014

Regina vs Sophia 169,709 births since 2014

Regina vs Isabella 158,431 births since 2014

Regina vs Ava 157,356 births since 2014

Regina vs Charlotte 151,872 births since 2014

Regina vs Mia 149,779 births since 2014

Regina vs Amelia 142,728 births since 2014

Compare to a different name →