Colleen

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Colleen, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.

• Hoover
• Kathleen
• Doreen
• Darlene
• Diane
• Deirdre
• Maureen
• Bridget
• Jolene
• Denise
• Aine
• Gillian

From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.

Colleen is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

• Polish given name17 spellings in the group

  Most recorded in United States, Poland, Russia, United Kingdom

  Languages: Polish, Russian, Croatian

  Also written Коллин, Collin, Kollin

65 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.

Colleen is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

• Mainly U.S. and Australian: from the Anglo-Irish vocabulary word colleen girl, wench (Gaelic cailín ). The name arose during the period of enthusiasm for Irish names in the 1940s and became especially popular in America, although it is not in fact used as a given name in Ireland. It is sometimes taken as a feminine of COLIN .

  as a word

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.

• Colleen Dewhurstb. 1924CACanadian-American actress (1924-1991)
• Colleen McCulloughb. 1937AUAustralian author (1937-2015)
• Colleen Atwoodb. 1948USAmerican costume designer
• Cassandra Harrisb. 1948AUnot in their usual nameAustralian actress (1948–1991)
• Kate Nelliganb. 1950CAnot in their usual nameCanadian actress
• Colleen Campb. 1953USAmerican actress and film producer
• Vitamin Cb. 1969USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer and actress
• Colleen Hooverb. 1979USAmerican author
• Colleen Ballingerb. 1986USAmerican comedian, singer, actress, writer and media personality
• CoCo Vandewegheb. 1991USnot in their usual nameAmerican tennis player

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).

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.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

What does the name Colleen mean, and where does it come from?

From the word colleen, from Irish cailín (“girl”), not used as a name in Ireland. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and Wiktionary.

What are other forms of the name Colleen?

In the etymology graph, Coleen, Colene and Kolleen are forms of the same name in other languages.

How do you pronounce Colleen?

In English /kɑˈlin/ (Wiktionary).

Is Colleen a male or female name?

Colleen is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: United States (Census Bureau, 2020) and France (INSEE, 2023).

In which country does Colleen have the most bearers?

In the United States, the national register counted about 138 thousand people named Colleen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled colleen.

How common is the name Colleen?

In the United States, the national register counted 137,514 people named Colleen in 2020, about 1 in 2.4 thousand residents.

How common is Colleen compared with other names?

In the United States, Colleen is the 308th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.