Philomena
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Greek, ‘loved’. Supposed relics of a saint of this name were discovered in 1802; cultus later suppressed by the Vatican
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Philomena is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country. In Angola it is the 75th most common given name.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 6.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- PTPortugal≈1 in 921as Filomena
- ITItaly≈1 in 2.1Kas Filomena
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 Philomena 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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 262 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈31,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Filomena in PE Peru, IT Italy, PH Philippines and 2 more.
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, ‘loved’. Supposed relics of a saint of this name were discovered in 1802; cultus later suppressed by the Vatican.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Philomena is read(measured from records)
Philomena 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.
- English67%
Greek, ‘loved’. Supposed relics of a saint of this name were discovered in 1802; cultus later suppressed by the Vatican.
as a nameIrish first names
A female given name from Ancient Greek.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Christian saint
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Swahili10%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Philomena in Swahili.
- Portuguese6.1%
alternative spelling of Filomena
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
Philomena 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.8K | listed | Philomena | 47 |
| IT Italy | #370 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | 26 | Filomena | 130 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.1K | — | Filomena | 37 |
| AO Angola | #75 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | — | Filomena | 32 |
| PE Peru | #421 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Filomena | 38 |
| PT Portugal | #126 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 921 | listed | Filomena | 98 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 5,163 | 1 in 3.3K | 4.6K | Philomena | 22 |
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: ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); the wgnd-ng-names register; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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)
Philomena 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.
Greek, ‘loved’. The supposed relics of a saint of this name were discovered in 1802. The name became popular in Ireland, but, when the Vatican suppressed the cultus, a sharp drop in the number of Irish girls given this name occurred.
as a nameIrish first names
From the name of an obscure saint (probably of the 3rd century) with a local cult in Italy. In 1527 the bones of a young woman were discovered under the church altar at San Severino near Ancona, together with a Latin inscription declaring them to be the body of St
as a nameA concise dictionary of first 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)
- Archduchess Maria Immakulata of Austriab. 1878ATnot in their usual nameAustrian archduchess (1878-1968)
- Bonnie Mealingb. 1912AUnot in their usual nameAustralian swimmer, Olympic silver medallist (1912–2002)
- Philomena Lynottb. 1930IEIrish author
- Philomena Leeb. 1933IEIrish nurse
- Clarissa Dickson Wrightb. 1947GBnot in their usual nameEnglish celebrity chef, television personality, businesswoman and formerly a barrister (1947-2014)
- Philomena Essedb. 1955NLAmerican professor
- Imelda Stauntonb. 1956GBnot in their usual nameBritish actress (born 1956)
- Clare Greyb. 1965GBnot in their usual nameBritish chemist and Professor of Chemistry
- Princess Philomena d'Orléansb. 1977FRFrench Royal
- Philomena Bairb. 1996ATAustrian Freestyle Skier
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 58 sources across 35 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 4.6K | #447 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 547 | #1,546 |
| NL Netherlands | Babynamen — Lijst met meer dan 22.000 namen (Amelia King, 2020) | — | — | — |
| IT Italy | Il Grande Libro dei Nomi per Bebè (2020) | — | — | — |
| NG Nigeria | WGND 2.0 — Nigeria given names | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Philomena mean, and where does it come from?
- Greek, ‘loved’. Supposed relics of a saint of this name were discovered in 1802; cultus later suppressed by the Vatican. Recorded by Irish first names.
- Is Philomena a male or female name?
- Philomena 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 are other forms of the name Philomena?
- In the etymology graph, Filomena, Philomène and Filimena are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Philomena have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 31 thousand people named Philomena in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled philomena.
- Where is Philomena most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Philomena is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 3.3 thousand people — even though Nigeria holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Philomena?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 5,163 people named Philomena, about 1 in 3.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Philomena compared with other names?
- In Angola, Philomena is the 75th most common given name of 11,132 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Philomena?
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/philomenaThe 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), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
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, “Philomena” — the 75th most common given name in Angola. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.