Arlene
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Arlene is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Jamaica it is the 20th most common given name. Recorded meaning: Modern coinage, especially common in ARTEMAS ARTEMIS the goddess pArtemis (for example, Artemidoros ‘gift of Artemis’ and Artemisthenes ‘strength of Artemis’).
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 561(inferred from the name graph)
- JMJamaica≈1 in 1.5K
- IEIreland≈1 in 2.5K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 502 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 561 (inferred from the name graph)
≈410,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Philippines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Modern coinage, especially common in ARTEMAS ARTEMIS the goddess pArtemis (for example, Artemidoros ‘gift of Artemis’ and Artemisthenes ‘strength of Artemis’). It is borne in the Bible by a character mentioned briefly in St Paul’s letter to Titus (3:12). The name enjoyed some popularity among the Puritans in the 17th century, but fell out of use again. Variant: Artemus (Latinized).
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Arlene 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈410,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | — | Arlene | 19 |
| PH Philippines | #87 | ≈190,000 est. | ≈1 in 561 | — | Arlene | 155 |
| US United States | #421 | 85,381 | 1 in 3.9K | 85K | Arlene | 502 |
| GB United Kingdom | #470 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | 3 | Arlene | 176 |
| BR Brazil | — | 16,072 | 1 in 13K | 18K | — | 4 |
| CA Canada | #380 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | 1 | Arlene | 210 |
| IE Ireland | #248 | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Arlene | 62 |
| JM Jamaica | #20 | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Arlene | 17 |
| GY Guyana | — | 276 | 1 in 2.7K | 276 | — | 6 |
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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Arlene is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A female given name originating as a coinage.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
English: modern coinage, most common in the United States. It is of unknown origin, probably a fanciful coinage based on MARLENE or CHARLENE or on both.
as a word
In Breton, l’an dernier
as a wordDeshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)
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)
- Arlene Francisb. 1907USAmerican actress and television host (1907–2001)
- Arlene Dahlb. 1925USAmerican actress (1925–2021)
- Arlene Aldab. 1933USAmerican photographer and writer
- Arlene Martelb. 1936USAmerican writer, actress and acting coach (1936–2014)
- Arlene Golonkab. 1936USactress (1936–2021)
- Arlene Phillipsb. 1943GBBritish choreographer
- Judith Resnikb. 1949USnot in their usual nameAmerican engineer and astronaut (1949–1986)
- Arlene Sanfordb. 1950USFilm director, television director
- Miriam Stockleyb. 1962GBnot in their usual nameBritish singer
- Arlene Fosterb. 1970GBBritish politician (born 1970)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 72 sources across 41 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 85K | #618 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 18K | #1,512 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 16K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 16K | #1,233 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 276 | #330 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 130 | #618 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 127 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 103 | #1,233 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 34 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1989 | 7 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 5 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2001 | 3 | #627 |
Reference works 3
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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
- What does the name Arlene mean, and where does it come from?
- Modern coinage, especially common in ARTEMAS ARTEMIS the goddess pArtemis (for example, Artemidoros ‘gift of Artemis’ and Artemisthenes ‘strength of Artemis’). Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- In which country does Arlene have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 410 thousand people named Arlene in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled arlene.
- Is Arlene a male or female name?
- Arlene 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 Arlene?
- In the etymology graph, Arleen and Arline are forms of the same name in other languages; Arlie is a recorded short or pet form.
- How common is the name Arlene?
- In the United States, the national register counted 85,381 people named Arlene in 2020, about 1 in 3.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Arlene compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Arlene is the 20th most common given name of 21,568 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Arlene?
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/arleneThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Arlene” — the 20th most common given name in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.