Edna
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Edna is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Ethiopia it is the 22nd most common given name. Recorded meaning: Biblical Hebrew, possibly from ʿēdnāh ‘delight, pleasure’.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 859(inferred from the name graph)
- BRBrazil1 in 1.2K
- GTGuatemala≈1 in 1.6K
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 Edna 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 347 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 859 (inferred from the name graph)
≈610,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Philippines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled עדנה in IL Israel and אדנה in ET Ethiopia.
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)
Biblical Hebrew, possibly from ʿēdnāh ‘delight, pleasure’
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Edna 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 | — | ≈610,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Edna | 11 |
| BR Brazil | #179 | 183,091 | 1 in 1.2K | 200K | Edna | 166 |
| PH Philippines | #443 | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 859 | — | Edna | 91 |
| US United States | — | 68,962 | 1 in 4.8K | 69K | Edna | 347 |
| ET Ethiopia | #22 | ≈51,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | אדנה | 6 |
| AO Angola | #68 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Edna | 28 |
| GT Guatemala | #141 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Edna | 34 |
| IL Israel | #240 | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | 476 | עדנה | 39 |
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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; CBS Israel — Family names in Israel, 2017 ("שמות משפחה בישראל 2017"). 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)
Edna is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
2 In Ireland this has been used as an Anglicized form of pEithne. The name occurs in the apocryphal Book of Tobit, where it is the name of the mother of Sarah and stepmother of Tobias. This is said to be from Hebrew ‘ednah ‘pleasure’, ‘delight’, and if so it is connected with the name of the Garden of jEden. The earliest known uses of the given name in
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Swedish, Edna är ett bibliskt namn av hebreiskt ursprung, samhörigt med → Adina. Det började användas i Storbritannien på 1700-talet. Det kan också vara en engelsk form av ett iriskt-gäliskt Ethna, Eithne, som är en femininform till Aidan ’liten eld’. Eithne har också föreslagits innehålla ett ord med betydelsen ’kärna’, använt som term för (lov)prisande i gammal irisk diktning.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In French, Du nom hébraïque Eden, « paradis ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In English, Scottish; feminine form of Edmund
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In German, gegen Ende des 19. Jh.s aus dem Eng lischen entlehnter weibl. Vom., englische
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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)
- Edna May Oliverb. 1883USAmerican actress (1883–1942)
- Edna Ferberb. 1885USAmerican novelist, short story writer and playwright (1885–1968)
- Edna St. Vincent Millayb. 1892USAmerican poet (1892–1950)
- Edna Parkerb. 1893USAmerican supercentenarian (1893–2008)
- Edna Murphyb. 1899USactress (1899-1974)
- Edna Bestb. 1900GBBritish actress (1900-1974)
- Edna Anhaltb. 1914USscreenwriter (1914–1987)
- Edna O'Brienb. 1930IEIrish writer (1930–2024)
- Edna Adan Ismailb. 1937GBSomaliland politician
- Donna Shalalab. 1941USnot in their usual name18th United States Secretary of Health and Human Services
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 104 sources across 62 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 200K | #265 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 183K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 182K | #181 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 69K | #739 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 717 | #181 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 272 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 105 | #739 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 72 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1974 | 5 | — |
Reference works 5
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- 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
- What does the name Edna mean, and where does it come from?
- Biblical Hebrew, possibly from ʿēdnāh ‘delight, pleasure’ Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- Is Edna a male or female name?
- Edna 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.
- In which country does Edna have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 611 thousand people named Edna in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled edna.
- What are other forms of the name Edna?
- In the etymology graph, Ena, Enya and Eithne are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Edna?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 183,091 people named Edna in 2022, about 1 in 1.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Edna compared with other names?
- In Ethiopia, Edna is the 22nd most common given name of 31,392 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Edna?
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/ednaThe 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, “Edna” — the 22nd most common given name in Ethiopia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.