Lena
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Lena 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 English, recorded as Short form of Helena, Magdalena, Caroline, etc.; used independently.
- SESweden1 in 123(measured from records)
- RURussia≈1 in 30as Елена
- BYBelarus≈1 in 35as 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 Lena 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 123 (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,700,000 named Елена, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Sweden
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 Helena in BR Brazil.
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)
Short form of Helena, Magdalena, Caroline, etc.; used independently.
Sources 1
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.
How Lena is read(measured from records)
Lena is one spelling over 4 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.
- English48%
- German11%
- French11%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Lena in French.
- Russian5.6%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Lena in Russian.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Lena 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 | 366,186as Helena | 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 | 117,524as Helena | 1 in 47 | 175K | Елена | 116 |
| SE Sweden | #3 | 82,851 | 1 in 123 | 83K | Lena | 150 |
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); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)
Lena 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.
Pet form of YELENA. Leonid $ From Greek Leénidas, the name of a Spartan hero who was named after his grandfather Leon ‘lion’. Later the name was borne by two early saints venerated in the Eastern Church.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Italian, from the female personal name Lena, a short form of Maddalena or Helena.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Italian, habitational name from a place called Lena in Asturies.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Lena Horneb. 1917USAmerican singer, actress, dancer and activist (1917–2010)
- Lena Nymanb. 1944SESwedish actress (1944–2011)
- Lena Olinb. 1955SESwedish stage actress, film actress, beauty pageant contestant, actress (1955–)
- Lena Headeyb. 1973GBBritish actress (born 1973)
- Lena Hallb. 1980USAmerican actress
- Lena Raineb. 1984USAmerican composer and producer (born 1984)
- Anna-Lena Grönefeldb. 1985DEGerman tennis player
- Lena Dunhamb. 1986USAmerican writer, director, actress, and producer (born 1986)
- Lena Meyer-Landrutb. 1991DEGerman singer (born 1991)
- Lena Paulb. 1993USAmerican pornographic actress
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 133 sources across 66 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 83K | #36 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 55K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 51K | #883 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 5K | #3,385 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 4.4K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 4.3K | #3,009 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 3K | #423 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 1.8K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 1.1K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 221 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 87 | #883 |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname 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
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
- 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 are other forms of the name Lena?
- In the etymology graph, Elena, Helen and Magdalena are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Helena and Helene.
- In which country does Lena 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 Lena most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lena is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 123 people — even though Russia holds more of our records for it.
- What does the name Lena mean, and where does it come from?
- Short form of Helena, Magdalena, Caroline, etc.; used independently. Recorded by Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular….
- Is Lena a male or female name?
- Lena 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.
- How common is the name Lena?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 82,851 people named Lena, about 1 in 123 residents.
- How common is Lena compared with other names?
- In Russia, Lena is the 2nd most common given name of 472,143 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lena?
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/lenaThe 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, “Lena” — the 2nd most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.