Philomene
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in French: From Greek; means “one who loves song/speech”
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/filɔmɑ̃/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Philomene is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Cameroon than in any other country. In Congo - Brazzaville it is the 51st most common given name.
- FRFrance≈1 in 23K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 507K
- CMCameroon≈1 in 2.7K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Cameroon (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 169 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈10,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Cameroon, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From Greek; means “one who loves song/speech”.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
How Philomene is read(measured from records)
Philomene is one spelling over 2 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.
- French73%
From Greek; means “one who loves song/speech”.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
- English19%
The nightingale.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Philomene 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CM Cameroon | #325 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | — | Philomene | 12 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | — | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 34K | 2 | Philomene | 9 |
| FR France | — | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 23K | 12K | Philomene | 169 |
| CG Congo - Brazzaville | #51 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | — | Philomene | 2 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Philomene | 8 |
| SN Senegal | #527 | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Philomene | 13 |
| RW Rwanda | #424 | ≈930 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Philomene | 4 |
| TG Togo | — | ≈730 est. | ≈1 in 12K | 1 | — | 2 |
| US United States | — | 656 | 1 in 507K | 652 | Philomene | 77 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; Journal Officiel — Liste definitive des candidats (legislatives 2024). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Lumina Sophieb. 1848FRnot in their usual nameheroine of the Martinican revolt of 1870
- Marie de la Charitéb. 1852CAnot in their usual nameCanadian Dominican nun (1852-1920)
- Philomène Cadoretb. 1892FRFrench poet (1892–1923)
- Philomène Lauwerijssenb. 1903BEBelgian painter
- Philomène Magninb. 1905FRFrench trade unionist
- Philomene Longb. 1940USAmerican writer (1940-2007)
- Philomène Espositob. 1955FRscreenwriter, film producer
- Philomene Magersb. 1965DEGerman art dealer
- Philomène Grandinb. 1974SESwedish actor and television host
- Philomène Lévesque-RainvilleCACanadian 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 29 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2016 | 12K | #3,420 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 652 | #16,996 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 1925 | 10 | #549 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1960 | 5 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 4 | #16,996 |
| TG Togo | Journal Officiel — Liste definitive des candidats (legislatives 2024) | 2024 | 1 | #23 |
| FR France | Le Grand Guide des Prénoms | — | — | — |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | WGND 2.0 — DR Congo given names | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Philomene mean, and where does it come from?
- From Greek; means “one who loves song/speech”. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- How do you pronounce Philomene?
- A machine transcription gives /filɔmɑ̃/ (IPA) for French.
- Is Philomene a male or female name?
- Philomene 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 Philomene have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 10 thousand people named Philomene in Cameroon, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled philomene.
- How common is the name Philomene?
- In the United States, the national register counted 656 people named Philomene in 2020, about 1 in 507 thousand residents.
- How common is Philomene compared with other names?
- In Cameroon, Philomene is the 325th most common given name of 9,064 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Philomene?
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/philomeneThe 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, “Philomene” — the 325th most common given name in Cameroon. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.