Ilona

given name · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Ilona is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Hungary than in any other country, where it is the 62nd most common given name. In Hungarian, recorded as a female given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English Helen.

rarermore common
  • HUHungary1 in 82(measured from records)
  • CZCzechia1 in 264
  • LVLatvia1 in 264

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 Ilona 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.

Hungary (measured from records)

119,612 people, 2025

8 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
215 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 82 (inferred from the name graph)

Hungary

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

IlonaLatin(measured from records)
ИлонаCyrillic(measured from records)
אילונהHebrew(measured from records)
ԻլոնաArmenian(measured from records)
ილონაGeorgian(measured from records)
ΙλοναGreek(measured from records)
อโลน่าThai(measured from records)
일로나Hangul(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Илона in RU Russia, FI Finland.

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)

Greek: “bright”; Hungarian: “beautiful.”

Sources 1

  • Tên Họ Người Việt Nam

Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.

How Ilona is read(measured from records)

Ilona is one spelling over 6 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.

  • Hungarian65%

    a female given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English Helen

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • German26%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Ilona in German.

  • English20%

    Greek: “bright”; Hungarian: “beautiful.”

    as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam

  • French13%

    Forme hongroise d’Hélène; d’origine grecque, associée à « éclat du soleil ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

    Hongrois, variante d'Helene; origine grecque.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • Ukrainian9.1%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Ilona in Ukrainian.

  • Polish6.6%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Ilona in Polish.

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)

Ilona 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.

Where Ilona is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
HU Hungary#62119,6121 in 82120KIlona136
PL Poland#17255,3571 in 69255KIlona161
CZ Czechia#14740,6081 in 26441KIlona97
RU Russia#219≈34,000 est.≈1 in 4.2K#215Илона167
FI Finland#75324,8721 in 22434KИлона15
LV Latvia#2117,1181 in 2647.1KIlona30

119,612 people counted by Nyilvántartó — Top-100 given names in population (2020–2025), 2025. 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: Nyilvántartó — Top-100 given names in population (2020–2025); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names); MVČR — living population register 2017; DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Ilona is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • German given name18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, United States, Netherlands, United Kingdom

    Languages: German, English, Dutch

    Also written Ìlona, Ilonã, Ilôna, Iloná, Ílóna

  • French given name16 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Spain, Brazil

    Languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Ilôna, Ilonä, Ilonã, Ilönã, Ilonà

  • Turkish given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Netherlands, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan

    Languages: Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen

    Also written Илона

67 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Ilona 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.

  • Hungarian form of Helen, now also sometimes used in the English-speaking world.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In Swedish, Ilona är en ungersk form av → Helena som används i flera länder, bland annat Finland, där det associeras till finskans ilo ’glädje’.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

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)

190019502000Ilona Fehér, b. 1901Ilona Elek, b. 1907Ilona Novák, b. 1925Archduchess Ilona of Austria, b. 1927Ilona Gusenbauer, b. 1947Ilona Staller, b. 1951Ilona Slupianek, b. 1956Ilona Bronevitskaya, b. 1961Katri Kulmuni, b. 1987Ilona Maher, b. 1996

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 83 sources across 44 countries.

Official registers attesting Ilona
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
HU HungaryNyilvántartó — Top-100 given names in population (2020–2025)2025120K#5
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—55K#90
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)202655K#90
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—41K#105
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—34K#55
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—25K—
CZ Czechianaše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot—20K#116
LV LatviaPMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register)—7.1K—
LV LatviaPMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup)—7.1K#58
HU Hungarymagyarnevek — given names by decade1990235#72
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—20#19,978
PL PolandMinistry of Digitalization — Imiona nadawane dzieciom w Polsce (2000–present)202517—

Reference works 4

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 Ilona come from?
Greek: “bright”; Hungarian: “beautiful.” Recorded by Tên Họ Người Việt Nam.
What does the name Ilona mean?
In Hungarian, a female given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English Helen
Is Ilona a male or female name?
Ilona 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 Ilona have the most bearers?
In Hungary, the national register counted about 120 thousand people named Ilona, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ilona.
Where is Ilona most common?
Ilona is densest in Hungary, where the national register counts about 1 in 82 people carrying it.
How common is the name Ilona?
In Hungary, the national register counted 119,612 people named Ilona in 2025, about 1 in 82 residents.
How common is Ilona compared with other names?
In Hungary, Ilona is the 62nd most common given name of 18,528 given names recorded there.
What are other forms of the name Ilona?
In the etymology graph, Helen and Ilike are forms of the same name in other languages; Ilka and Ilonka are recorded short or pet forms.

What do you want to know about Ilona?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ilona

The 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, “Ilona” — the 62nd most common given name in Hungary. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ilona parses inside a full name →