Faina
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Faina is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: "light".
- USUnited States1 in 222K(measured from records)
- LVLatvia1 in 4.9K
- ILIsrael≈1 in 11K
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 Faina 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 197 (measured from records)
- 1 in 4.9K (inferred from the name graph)
1,496 people, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Latvia
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)
"light."
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Faina 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 1,496 | 1 in 222K | 1.5K | Faina | 197 |
| RU Russia | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 114K | — | Faina | 23 |
| IL Israel | ≈770 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Faina | 24 |
| LV Latvia | 381 | 1 in 4.9K | 381 | — | 4 |
| DE Germany | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 294K | 1 | Faina | 49 |
| MD Moldova | 241 | 1 in 14K | 241 | — | 1 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 70K | 3 | Faina | 8 |
| GE Georgia | 80as ფაინა | 1 in 50K | 80 | Faina | 6 |
1,496 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register); the de-leipzig-vornamen register; e-services.md — living population register; Georgia PSDA/SDA civil-registry name statistics (per-token API); Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics. 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)
Faina 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.
In Italian, do lat. fagina, fuinha; caçador e mercador de peles
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
Mi madre la mejor o la Fascinante, encantadora, cautivante
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
In German, ) Fayna: von den Kanarischen
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In Italian, beech marten, stone marten (Martes foina)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Portuguese, work onboard a ship
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Faina Shevchenkob. 1893RURussian actor (1893-1971)
- Faina Ranevskayab. 1896RUSoviet actress (1896-1984)
- Faina Kogan-Bernsteinb. 1899SESoviet historian (1899-1976)
- Chiang Fang-liangb. 1916TWnot in their usual nameformer First Lady of Taiwan (1916-2004)
- Faina Mihajlovna Kirillovab. 1931BYSoviet mathematician (1931–2024)
- Faina Petryakovab. 1931UAUkrainian ethnographer
- Faina Melnykb. 1945RUSoviet discus thrower
- Faina Grimbergb. 1951RURussian poet, literary critic
- Faina Kirschenbaumb. 1955ILIsraeli politician
- Faina BerezovskayaRUD.Sc. Moscow Physical Technical Institute 1997
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 54 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.5K | #9,328 |
| LV Latvia | PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register) | — | 381 | — |
| LV Latvia | PMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup) | — | 373 | #682 |
| MD Moldova | e-services.md — living population register | — | 241 | #629 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 5 | — |
| AZ Azerbaijan | Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics | — | 3 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1 | #9,328 |
| DE Germany | Stadt Leipzig Open Data — Vornamensstatistik Neugeborene | 2021 | 1 | #1 |
| DE Germany | Stadt Düsseldorf Open Data — Vornamen Neugeborene | 2012 | 1 | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
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 Faina mean, and where does it come from?
- "light." Recorded by A Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996).
- Is Faina a male or female name?
- Faina 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 Faina have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.5 thousand people named Faina, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled faina.
- Where is Faina most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Faina is densest in Latvia — about 1 in 4.9 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Faina?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,496 people named Faina in 2020, about 1 in 222 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Faina?
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/fainaThe 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, “Faina”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.