Anona
Feminine · “the year's harvest”
Anona arrived in American naming with a piece of sheet music. At the start of the twentieth century a song called Anona sold in very large numbers, and American parents did what they always do with a tune they cannot get out of their heads. It is also, quite separately, the name the Romans gave to the personification of the grain supply — the thing that kept a city of a million people fed.
How old is the name Anona?
Anona first appears in US birth records in 1903 — 122 years ago. The typical Anona alive today was born around 1926, making them about 99 years old. About 100 people named Anona are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Anona most popular?
Anona peaked in 1904, reaching #755 nationally. Today it ranks #13208, 12,453 places below that high. See the whole 1904 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From annona to Anona
The story of Anona
Sheet music was the mass medium of its day, and a successful song sold in the millions of copies to be played on parlor pianos. Anona was one of those songs, and the record shows exactly the shape a song-name makes: an appearance out of nothing, a sharp peak within a year or two, and a long decline as the tune is forgotten. Names that arrive this way rarely settle into the general stock, and this one did not. The Roman word behind it, meanwhile, has a much longer life — annona is where the modern Italian word for a harvest year comes from.
Meaningscholars disagree
the year's harvest, the grain supply
The Latin annona means the produce of a year, and by extension the corn dole that fed Rome; it was personified as a goddess and appears on coins. Whether the American name descends from that word or was invented for a song is genuinely unclear — the composer may simply have wanted a shape that sounded exotic, which was the fashion of the moment. Both accounts deserve stating.
How the name formed
- annona
- Anona
Related forms: Annona · Annona
Pronouncing Anona
uh-NOH-nuh
Three syllables, stress in the middle, all vowels open. Nothing in the spelling gives an English reader trouble, which is one reason a song could make it popular so quickly.
Nicknames for Anona
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1903
- Most girls named
- 192523 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #755reached in 1904
- Change vs 2019
- +20.0%6 in 2025, from 5
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Anona in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Annona in Latin — related form
- Annona in Italian — related form
Anonas among us
people named Anona are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 267,878 born in 2025 was named Anona
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
Fashion outlook
Anona sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Anona beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Anona in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Three open syllables and five letters — easy to say in any accent and easy to spell after hearing.
- It is genuinely rare, and a child will almost certainly never meet another.
- Nona works as a short form and is a real word in two languages.
- It sits well with long or consonant-heavy surnames.
- It belongs to a very specific moment in American popular music and carries that period flavor.
- The connection to the Latin word cannot be established, so the meaning has to be given with a qualification.
- It is easily confused with Anona's near-neighbors Annona, Ramona and Anna.
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Anona
Feminine · #13208 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Anonas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 100 people named Anona are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Anona in 2025?
- Anona ranks #13208 among US girl names in 2025, with 6 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Anona?
- About 1 in every 267,878 US girls born in 2025 was named Anona — 6 in all.
- Will my child share the name Anona with classmates?
- Anona will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Anona
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
John#13208 · Vinnie#13208 · Margery#13208 · Jossie#13208 · Tressa#13208 · Erie#13208 · Bernadine#13208 · Euna#13208
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Anona? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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