Names of Romania

RO

DEPABD — name-day population snapshot (2023) records Ioana as the commonest given name in Romania; the names that most distinguish Romania from the rest of the world are Alexandru, Adrian and Vasile.

Written in Romanian, Hungarian.

Population
21M
Official registers
2
Name forms recorded
46K
BBuilt from 2 official registers (2023), 45,716 name forms in our corpus, 4 cited works.

At least one official register, plus a written account of the naming system.

The account of the naming system rests on encyclopaedia and genealogy sources; it has not yet been checked against onomastic literature.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of Romania are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Romania included.

How names work in Romania

2 naming traditions are in use in Romania, listed in the order of the country's languages. They are separate systems, not variants of one, and each has its own page.

The most common names in Romania

Counts everyone resident in the country · authority tier 1

This register publishes counts, not ranks; the numbering is the order of its own figures.

DEPABD — name-day population snapshot, 2023 — 20 given names counted over residents, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Ioana391K22
2Ionela148K61
3Stefania125K—
4Ştefania125K—
5Oana72K49
6Stefana18K—
7Ştefana18K—
8Nela11K—
9Fanica8K—
10Fănica8K—
11Ionelia6.8K—
12Jana4.8K—
13Fănică4.6K—
14Ionică4.5K—
15Ioniţă1.9K—
16Fanuta996—
17Fănuţa996—
18Ionuţa582—
19Fana297—
20Onuţa134—

Where the two lists disagree

21 of DEPABD — name-day population snapshot's top 22 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

DEPABD — name-day population snapshot 2023Across all recordsioan: 1 → 51. ioan5ionuț: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. ionuțnot rankedion: 3 → 16 · ranks lower across all records3. ion16stefan: 4 → 30 · ranks lower across all records4. stefan30ştefan: 5 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country5. ştefannot rankedionel: 6 → 54 · ranks lower across all records6. ionel54istvan: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. istvannot rankedistván: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. istvánnot rankednelu: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. nelunot rankedionica: 10 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country10. ionicanot rankedfanel: 11 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country11. fanelnot rankedfănel: 12 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country12. fănelnot rankedivan: 13 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country13. ivannot rankedjan: 14 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country14. jannot rankedstefanel: 15 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country15. stefanelnot rankedştefănel: 16 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country16. ştefănelnot rankedjean: 17 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country17. jeannot rankedstefanut: 18 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country18. stefanutnot rankedştefănuţ: 19 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country19. ştefănuţnot rankedfane: 20 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country20. fanenot rankedstefanus: 21 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country21. stefanusnot rankedştefănuş: 22 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country22. ştefănuşnot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
DEPABD — name-day population snapshot, 2023 on the left; every record we hold for Romania on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of Romania

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Romania holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

AlexandruIoanAdrianVasileAndreiConstantinFlorinIonutGheorgheAndreeaMihaiMariusMihaelaIonDanielNicolaeIoanaCristinaMarianAlexandra
Sized by how much of the difference between Romania's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.(measured from records)

Scripts & spelling

Names in Romania are written in Latin (81%) and Hebrew (19%), measured over the spellings our corpus records for this country.

Elenagiven name(measured from records)
Alexandrugiven name(measured from records)
Cristiangiven name(measured from records)
Ioangiven name(measured from records)
Adriangiven name(measured from records)
The best-attested names in Romania, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

  • DEPABD — name-day population snapshot2023headline (given)

    Direcția pentru Evidența Persoanelor și Administrarea Bazelor de Date (DEPABD), Romania counts residents: 22 given-name forms for 2009–2023. Last verified 2026-06-05.

  • DEPABD — resident population names2023

    Direcția pentru Evidența Persoanelor și Administrarea Bazelor de Date (DEPABD), Romania counts residents: 22 given-name forms for 2009–2023. Last verified 2026-06-05.

Cited works

Behind this page's own account — its one-line answer, its explanation of why the rankings differ, and the notes on its registers. Each naming tradition cites its own sources on its page. Not yet checked against onomastic literature.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-10-09.

Questions

What is the most common given name in Romania?
Ioan, according to DEPABD — name-day population snapshot (2023), with 447,697 bearers recorded among boys.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Romania?
Because they count different people. DEPABD — name-day population snapshot (2023) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Ioan. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Elena. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.
Is there one naming system in Romania?
No — 2 are described on this page (Romanian, Hungarian), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Romania”, https://mondonomo.ai/names/RO (data snapshot 2026-10-09). Official figures from DEPABD — name-day population snapshot.