Selina

given name · Latin script

Meaning: Of uncertain origin. It is first found in the 17th century, and it may be an altered form of Selena (Greek Seléné), the name of a goddess of the moon, or of Celina (Latin Caelina), a derivative of Cel

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Selina is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • TZTanzania≈1 in 1.2K(inferred from the name graph)
  • ATAustria≈1 in 2.3K
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 3.2K

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 Selina 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.

Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)

≈47,000 people, est.

7 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
445 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)

Tanzania, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

SelenaLatin(measured from records)
ՍելինաArmenian(measured from records)
เซลิน่าThai(measured from records)
СелинаCyrillic(measured from records)
ΣελέναGreek(measured from records)
셀리나Hangul(measured from records)
სელენაGeorgian(measured from records)

Locally spelled Selena in US United States.

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)

Of uncertain origin. It is first found in the 17th century, and it may be an altered form of Selena (Greek Seléné), the name of a goddess of the moon, or of Celina (Latin Caelina), a derivative of Celia. The name suddenly became more popular in Britain in the 1980s, partly perhaps due to the television personality Selina Scott.

Sources 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Selina 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.

Where Selina is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
TZ Tanzania#436≈47,000 est.≈1 in 1.2K—Selina18
US United States#95643,320as Selena1 in 7.7K43KSelena445
BR Brazil—40,881as Celina1 in 5.2K48KSelina47
PL Poland—17,524as Celina1 in 2.2K18K—1
ZA South Africa#616≈17,000 est.≈1 in 3.2K—Selina40
AT Austria#323≈3,800 est.≈1 in 2.3K8.2KSelina90
DK Denmark—2,638as Celina1 in 2.2K2.6KSelina56
NO Norway—2,053as Celina1 in 2.7K7.2KSelina22
FI Finland—2,0311 in 2.7K2.9KSelina33

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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Selina is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Bangla given name17 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Bangladesh, United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: Bangla, Hindi, Urdu

    Also written সেলিনা, Shelina, Selinā, সেলি্না, সেলিনা্

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Šelina, Selinā, Sélina

  • French given name10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Tanzania, United Kingdom

    Also written Sélina, Sëlïnä, Sèlina, Selîna, Sèlîñã

  • Russian surname22 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Türkiye

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Polish

    Also written Селина, Селіна, Целина, Celina, Сёлина

  • Croatian given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Croatia, Bulgaria, United Kingdom

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Serbian

    Also written Селина

46 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Selina 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 Swedish, Selina kan vara en engelsk form av grekiskans Selḗnē, namn på mångudinnan, eller en skrivvariant av Celina (→ Celine). Under 1800-talet förekom stavningen Selina i Sverige, ibland även som en variant av Zerlina.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In German, weibl. Vom., Variante von

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • English: of uncertain origin. The name first occurs in the 17th century, and it may be an altered form of Selena (Greek Sel n ), the name of a goddess of the moon, or of Celina (Latin Cael na ), a derivative of CELIA . The name suddenly became more popular in Britain in the 1980s, partly perhaps because of the familiarity of the television newsreader Selina Scott.

    as a word

  • In Latvian, pilsēta ASV ("Celina"), Ohaio štatā, 10400 iedzīvotāju (2014. g.)

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, Sievietes vārds

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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)

17001800190020002100Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, b. 1707Selina Hossain, b. 1947Selina Cadell, b. 1953Selina Giles, b. 1972Selina Jen, b. 1981Selina Gasparin, b. 1984Selina Jörg, b. 1988Selina Lo, b. 1991Selina Shirin Müller, b. 1993Selina Freitag, b. 2001

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 103 sources across 53 countries.

Official registers attesting Selina
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202016K#1,812
AT AustriaStatistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024)20248.2K#101
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—3.8K#3,944
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—2.9K#436
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)20222.7K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—2.7K#4,148
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—2K—
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—1.9K#1,112
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—1K#384
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2025548—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025176—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)2020163—

Reference works 5

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • 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

In which country does Selina have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 47 thousand people named Selina in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled selina.
What does the name Selina mean, and where does it come from?
Of uncertain origin. It is first found in the 17th century, and it may be an altered form of Selena (Greek Seléné), the name of a goddess of the moon, or of Celina (Latin Caelina), a derivative of Cel… Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
Is Selina a male or female name?
Selina 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 common is the name Selina?
In Finland, the national register counted 2,031 people named Selina, about 1 in 2.7 thousand residents.
How common is Selina compared with other names?
In Tanzania, Selina is the 436th most common given name of 37,285 given names recorded there.
What are other forms of the name Selina?
In the etymology graph, Celine is a form of the same name in other languages.

What do you want to know about Selina?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/selina

The 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, “Selina” — the 436th most common given name in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Selina parses inside a full name →