Helen
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Helen 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. Recorded meaning: Greek ‘bright one’; legendary Greek beauty; popular through St Helena, mother of Constantine.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 302(inferred from the name graph)
- 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 Helen 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 302 (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,700,000 named Елена, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
20 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Елена in RU Russia, BY Belarus, FI Finland, Олена in UA Ukraine, Alan in GB United Kingdom 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)
Greek ‘bright one’; legendary Greek beauty; popular through St Helena, mother of Constantine.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Helen 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 |
| GB United Kingdom | #13 | ≈220,000 est. | ≈1 in 302 | 5.7K | Alan | 371 |
| FI Finland | #1 | 117,524as Helena | 1 in 47 | 175K | Елена | 116 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); 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). 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)
Helen is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Norwegian, habitational name from any of numerous farmsteads, notably in Agder and southwestern Norway, so named from the definite singular form of hei ‘heath’, ‘moor’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Norwegian, from a short form of any of the Germanic compound personal names formed with hag ‘enclosure’, ‘fenced area’ as the first element.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, The daughter of Zeus and Leda, considered to be the most beautiful woman in the world; her abduction by Paris brought about the Trojan War.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Helen är den engelska formen och Hélène den franska av → Helena. Namnformerna var mycket populära under 1900-talets senare del i Sverige men används sparsamt i dagens namngivning. En känd namnbärare är artisten Helen Sjöholm (f. 1970).
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In English, daughter of Zeus & Leda, wife of
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper 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)
- Helen Kellerb. 1880USAmerican deafblind author, political activist, lecturer, scholar (1880-1968)
- Helen Hayesb. 1900USAmerican actress (1900–1993)
- Helen Hortonb. 1923USAmerican actress (1923–2007)
- Martha Stewartb. 1941USnot in their usual nameAmerican businesswoman, writer, TV personality (born 1941)
- Helen Mirrenb. 1945GBBritish actress (born 1945)
- Elizabeth Blackburnb. 1948AUnot in their usual nameAustralian-American biological researcher
- Helen Clarkb. 1950NZPrime Minister of New Zealand from 1999 to 2008
- Helen Huntb. 1963USAmerican actress
- Helen Sharmanb. 1963GBBritish chemist who became the first Briton in space
- Sophie Rhys-Jonesb. 1965GBnot in their usual nameBritish Royal, wife of Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh
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 124 sources across 60 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 504 | #45,684 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 495 | #41,448 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 462 | #3,700 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 265 | #73,215 |
Reference works 8
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name 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
- Kotík, Antonín, Naše příjmení (nové vydání, 1897)
- 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 does the name Helen mean, and where does it come from?
- Greek ‘bright one’; legendary Greek beauty; popular through St Helena, mother of Constantine. Recorded by Irish first names.
- What are other forms of the name Helen?
- In the etymology graph, Elena, Elaine and Ellen are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Is Helen a male or female name?
- Helen 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 Helen have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.7 million people named Елена in Russia, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Helen?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 366,186 people named Helena in 2022, about 1 in 578 residents.
- How common is Helen compared with other names?
- In Russia, Helen is the 2nd most common given name of 472,143 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Helen?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/helenThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Helen” — the 2nd most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.