Helena
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Helena 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. In Portuguese, recorded as a female given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English Helen.
- FIFinland1 in 47(measured from records)
- BRBrazil1 in 578
- RURussia≈1 in 30as 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 Helena 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 47 (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,700,000 named Елена, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Finland
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 Ελενη in GR Greece.
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)
Latin form of Helen; used from time to time in Ireland.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
How Helena is read(measured from records)
Helena 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.
- Portuguese58%
a female given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English Helen
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English15%
Latin form of Helen; used from time to time in Ireland.
as a nameIrish first names
A female given name from Ancient Greek.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
city, MT
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Spanish7.2%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Helena in Spanish.
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)
Helena 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 | 366,186 | 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 | 117,524 | 1 in 47 | 175K | Елена | 116 |
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); 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)
Helena 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 Polish, a female given name from Latin [in turn from Ancient Greek], equivalent to English Helen
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Dutch, a female given name, a Latinate variant of Heleen (=Helen)
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)
- Helena Blavatskyb. 1831USRussian occult writer (1831-1891)
- Princess Helena of the United Kingdomb. 1846GBMember of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg (1846–1923)
- Cecilia Helena Payne Gaposchkinb. 1900USBritish-born American astronomer
- Maria Kaczyńskab. 1942PLnot in their usual nameFirst Lady of Poland (1942-2010)
- Princess Christina, Mrs. Magnusonb. 1943SEnot in their usual nameSwedish princess; elder sister of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden
- Helena Sukováb. 1965CZCzech tennis player and psychologist
- Helena Bonham Carterb. 1966GBBritish actress (born 1966)
- Helena Christensenb. 1968DKDanish model and photographer
- Elena Paparizoub. 1982SEnot in their usual nameGreek singer
- Princess Eugenie of Yorkb. 1990GBnot in their usual nameyounger daughter of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and Sarah Ferguson
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 130 sources across 68 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 366K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 364K | #73 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 198K | #268 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 175K | #2 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 118K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 113K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 32K | #1,218 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.9K | #73 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 841 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 44 | #1,218 |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- Where does the name Helena come from?
- Latin form of Helen; used from time to time in Ireland. Recorded by Irish first names.
- What are other forms of the name Helena?
- 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.
- Is Helena a male or female name?
- Helena 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 does the name Helena mean?
- In Portuguese, a female given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English Helen
- In which country does Helena have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.7 million people named Елена in Russia, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Helena most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Helena is densest in Finland — about 1 in 47 people — even though Russia holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Helena?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 366,186 people named Helena in 2022, about 1 in 578 residents.
- How common is Helena compared with other names?
- In Russia, Helena is the 2nd most common given name of 472,143 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Helena?
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/helenaThe 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, “Helena” — the 2nd most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.