Helene
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: French/German form of Helen, from Greek 'torch; shining one'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɛln/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Helene is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Russia than in any other country, where it is the 2nd most common given name.
- FRFrance≈1 in 680(inferred from the name graph)
- RURussia≈1 in 30as Елена
- BYBelarus≈1 in 35as Елена
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Helene itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Russia (inferred from the name graph)
- #2 (measured from records)
- 10 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 644 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 680 (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,700,000 named Елена, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
19 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Елена in RU Russia, BY Belarus, FI Finland, Helen in US United States, Олена in UA Ukraine and Helena in BR Brazil.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
French/German form of Helen, from Greek 'torch; shining one'.
Sources 1
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
How Helene is read(measured from records)
Helene is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- French51%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Helene in French.
- English30%
French/German form of Helen, from Greek 'torch; shining one'.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
A female given name from Ancient Greek.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German6.4%
) Helena: in Deutschland seit dem Mittelalter belegter weibl. Vom. (griech.
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Helene Weigel,
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Helene counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RU Russia | #2 | ≈4,700,000 est. | ≈1 in 30 | #3 | Елена | 309 |
| UA Ukraine | #2 | ≈1,100,000 est. | ≈1 in 41 | listed | Олена | 174 |
| BR Brazil | #17 | 366,186as Helena | 1 in 578 | 366K | Helena | 227 |
| US United States | #26 | 284,872as Alan | 1 in 1.2K | 483K | Helen | 644 |
| GR Greece | #9 | 272,590as Ελένη | 1 in 39 | 520K | Ελενη | 198 |
| BY Belarus | #1 | ≈270,000 est. | ≈1 in 35 | 39 | Елена | 81 |
| FI Finland | #1 | 117,524as Helena | 1 in 47 | 175K | Елена | 116 |
| FR France | #31 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 680 | 282K | Helene | 378 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); ELSTAT — population given names; According to a survey conducted by the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), the most popular male and female names i; Universal Dependencies Belarusian-HSE Corpus — Person Names (UD_Belarusian-HSE); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Helene is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Hawaiian, Greece (a country in Southeast Europe)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, Helēna - Saturna pavadonis
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Princess Helena, Duchess of Albanyb. 1861DEnot in their usual nameGerman princess (1861-1922)
- Clara Immerwahrb. 1870DEnot in their usual nameGerman chemist (1870-1915)
- Alexandra Feodorovnab. 1872RUnot in their usual nameEmpress consort of Russia (1872–1918)
- Gabriele Münterb. 1877DEnot in their usual nameGerman painter (1877–1962)
- Margarete Schütte-Lihotzkyb. 1897ATnot in their usual nameAustrian architect (1897–2000)
- Helene Weigelb. 1900ATGerman actress and artistic director (1900–1971)
- Leni Riefenstahlb. 1902DEnot in their usual nameGerman filmmaker, photographer, actress, and nazi propagandist (1902–2003)
- Helene Grassb. 1974DEGerman actress
- Helene Fischerb. 1984DEGerman singer
- Eleni Foureirab. 1987GRnot in their usual nameGreek singer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 85 sources across 49 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 19K | #1,646 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 2.4K | #493 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 1.6K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 1.6K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.6K | #6,061 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 1.3K | #7,992 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 231 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2016 | 225 | #1,819 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 42 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 20 | #1,646 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 10 | #37,375 |
Reference works 4
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you pronounce Helene?
- A machine transcription gives /ɛln/ (IPA) for French.
- What does the name Helene mean, and where does it come from?
- French/German form of Helen, from Greek 'torch; shining one'. Recorded by Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular….
- Is Helene a male or female name?
- Helene is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Helene?
- In the etymology graph, Elena, Helen and Elaine are forms of the same name in other languages; Lena, Ella and Eli are recorded short or pet forms.
- In which country does Helene have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.7 million people named Елена in Russia, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Helene?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 366,186 people named Helena in 2022, about 1 in 578 residents.
- How common is Helene compared with other names?
- In Russia, Helene is the 2nd most common given name of 472,143 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Helene?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/heleneThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Helene” — the 2nd most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.