Iona
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A small island in the Inner Hebrides, Argyll and Bute council area, Scotland
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ajownə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Iona is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 23K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 37K
- USUnited States1 in 87K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 302 (measured from records)
- 1 in 8.1K (inferred from the name graph)
3,833 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A small island in the Inner Hebrides, Argyll and Bute council area, Scotland.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Iona 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 3,833 | 1 in 87K | 3.8K | Iona | 302 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 23K | 50 | Iona | 197 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 153K | — | Iona | 34 |
| BR Brazil | — | 1,722 | 1 in 123K | 1.8K | — | 3 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈760 est. | ≈1 in 82K | — | Iona | 17 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈690 est. | ≈1 in 37K | 3 | Iona | 96 |
| JM Jamaica | #490 | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Iona | 5 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 33K | 14 | Iona | 53 |
| GY Guyana | #479 | 93 | 1 in 8.1K | 93 | Iona | 3 |
3,833 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Iona 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.
Jonah; Asti/Torino
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Italian, var. regional de Giona; do hebr. Yonah, ‘pomba’.
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In English, Scottish; name of Hebridean island
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Arco iris
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
In Hawaiian, Jonah (biblical character)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Iona Yakirb. 1896MDSoviet military commander (1896–1937)
- Iona Campagnolob. 1932CACanadian politician
- Iona Brownb. 1941GBBritish violinist and conductor (1941–2004)
- Iona Morrisb. 1957USAmerican actress
- Annabelle Neilsonb. 1969GBnot in their usual nameBritish socialite, fashion model, author, and television personality (1969–2018)
- Iona Miharab. 1977JPJapanese actress
- Archduchess Eleonore of Austriab. 1994ATnot in their usual nameAustrian Imperial and Royal
- Iona Fyfeb. 1998GBScottish singer which use the Scots
- Iona Andersonb. 2005AUAustralian swimmer
- Iona ThomasGBBritish diplomat
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 72 sources across 39 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3.8K | #4,740 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 1.8K | #6,462 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 1.7K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.7K | #5,681 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 144 | — |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 93 | #501 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 65 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 60 | #5,681 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 50 | #4,740 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 50 | #83 |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1961 | 14 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2024 | 5 | — |
Reference works 4
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Iona mean, and where does it come from?
- A small island in the Inner Hebrides, Argyll and Bute council area, Scotland. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Iona a male or female name?
- Iona 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.
- How do you pronounce Iona?
- A machine transcription gives /ajownə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Iona have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 3.8 thousand people named Iona, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled iona.
- Where is Iona most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Iona is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 8.1 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Iona?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,833 people named Iona in 2020, about 1 in 87 thousand residents.
- How common is Iona compared with other names?
- In Guyana, Iona is the 479th most common given name of 15,440 given names recorded there.
- What are other forms of the name Iona?
- In the etymology graph, Jonah, Younes and Joonas are forms of the same name in other languages.
What do you want to know about Iona?
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/ionaThe 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, “Iona” — the 479th most common given name in Guyana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.