Edna
- Pronunciation
- [Ed-na]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Fire
- Origin
- Celtic
About the Name Edna
Edna carries a Celtic heritage linked to the element meaning "fire," giving the name a vivid, elemental resonance that suited the Victorian and Edwardian eras when it flourished. The name also appears in apocryphal Hebrew texts, which extended its reach across religious naming traditions. This dual background — Celtic spark and ancient Semitic usage — made Edna one of those rare Victorian choices that felt both rooted and internationally legible.
Among its most celebrated bearers is the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose technically precise sonnets, frank treatment of female desire, and bohemian Greenwich Village persona made her one of the most popular and most discussed poets of her generation. Her prominence in the early-to-mid twentieth century aligned almost exactly with the name's own apex on the charts.
Edna appears in the US Social Security top-1000 from 1880 — the earliest year tracked — and reached its peak at rank #11 in 1899. It remained a consistent top-100 name through the early twentieth century before beginning a steady decline, last appearing in the top-1000 in 1942 at rank #99. Its current absence from the charts is a marker of rarity rather than disuse, and the name's crisp two-syllable sound and literary associations position it as a strong candidate for the vintage-revival cycle. Recorded variants include Eddie and Eddy.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Edna
US Popularity History (1880–1942)
Annual US births named Edna by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1918 with 8,698 girls named Edna (girl rank #23 that year).
Where it stands today: in 1942, ranked #99 for girls (2,763 US births). That's 76 places below its 1918 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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Variant Forms
Famous People Named Edna
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Edna.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poetess and playwright.
Looking for names like Edna?
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 Edna to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Edna 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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