Arianna
Feminine · “most holy”
Arianna is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 104,152 girls against 73 boys since 1880.
Arianna is the Italian form of Ariadne, the Cretan princess of Greek myth who handed Theseus the thread that got him out of the labyrinth. Composers kept the name on stage for centuries — Monteverdi's L'Arianna in 1608, Handel's Arianna in Creta in 1734 — and it arrived in American English with those four unhurried syllables intact. It is a long name that never feels heavy in the mouth, because the stress lands squarely in the middle and the ending falls away.
How old is the name Arianna?
Arianna first appears in US birth records in 1963 — 62 years ago. The typical Arianna alive today was born around 2009, making them about 16 years old. About 103,000 people named Arianna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Arianna most popular?
Arianna peaked in 2014, reaching #40 nationally. Today it ranks #234, 194 places below that high. See the whole 2014 chart.
Where it comes from
From Ariadne to Arianna
The story of Arianna
The name begins as Ariadne in Greek, borne in myth by the daughter of King Minos of Crete, and it passed into Latin and then into the Romance languages, softening as it went. Italian turned Ariadna into Arianna, French into Ariane, Spanish into Ariadna. Italian opera carried the name well beyond Italy — Monteverdi set her lament in 1608 and Handel gave her an opera of her own in the 1730s — so the form with the double n was familiar in Europe long before it reached American birth records. In the United States it arrived in the twentieth century, alongside the single-n Ariana, and both spellings have traveled together since.
Meaning
most holy
From Greek Ariadne: the intensifier ari- joined to adnos, the Cretan form of hagnos, 'holy, pure'.
Cultural footprint
Arianna Huffington (b. 1950) — Co-founded The Huffington Post
Source: Wikidata — the one source on this page that is not an official agency.
How the name formed
- Ariadne
- Ariadna
- Arianna
- Ariana
Related forms: Ariadne · Ariane · Ariadna · Ariana · Ariadne · Ariadna
Pronouncing Arianna
ar-ee-AH-nuh
The Italian-leaning ar-ee-AH-nuh and the flatter ar-ee-AN-uh (rhyming with Anna) are both in ordinary American use, and families often settle it by habit rather than rule.
Nicknames for Arianna
High
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
- 1963
- Most girls named
- 20145,276 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #40reached in 2014
- Change vs 2024
- −15.4%1,323 in 2025, from 1,564
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.
Arianna in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Ariadne in Greek — same name
- Ariane in French — same name
- Ariadna in Spanish — same name
- Ariana in English — spelling variant
- Ariadne in German — same name
- Ariadna in Russian — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Ariannas among us
people named Arianna are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 1,215 born in 2025 was named Arianna
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Arianna
- #234
- Arianna on the 2025 chart
- #69
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Arianna went to 1,323 girls in 2025, but Ariana, Aryana and Aryanna and the rest below are the same name said out loud. Together the 10 spellings went to 3,805, which makes it the 69th most-given girls’ name of the year — 165 places above the chart.
and 4 rarer spellings.
About 1 girl in 422 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 1,215 for Arianna itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Alicia test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Arianna's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Alicia climbed just as high around 1984, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Alicia's path sketches the road Arianna is walking now.
Arianna is coming down from a big peak (#40 in 2014). This is the stretch of the cycle where a name starts to sound like the decade it ruled.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Arianna is headed
Arianna is easing off slowly — about 16% fewer babies a year by 2030 if the trend continues.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Arianna beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Arianna in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Ari and Anna are both long-established short forms, so the name works at full length and in a single syllable without inventing anything.
- Recognizable across Italian, Spanish, French and English, with a near-identical form waiting in each.
- A documented line back to Greek myth, kept alive on European opera stages since the early seventeenth century.
- Phonetic once heard: nothing silent, nothing irregular, and no letter doing unexpected work.
- Ariana, with one n, is equally current in the United States. Expect to spell it aloud fairly often, and to see the other version on the odd form and party invitation.
- The two pronunciations — ar-ee-AH-nuh and ar-ee-AN-uh — both sound entirely natural to American ears, so she will meet people who say it the other way and mean no harm by it.
- The Ari- opening is shared with Aria, Ariel and Ariella, so the short form Ari may not be hers alone in a given classroom.
- It is drifting down from a high-water mark, which in practice means it is widely recognized but no longer crowded — she is unlikely to share it with anyone in her year.
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What they receive
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Arianna
Feminine · #234 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Ariannas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 103,000 people named Arianna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Arianna?
- Arianna is one of 6 recorded spellings. Ariana is the more common one — 2,219 births in 2025 against 1,323 for Arianna.
- How popular is the name Arianna in 2025?
- Arianna ranks #234 among US girl names in 2025, with 1,323 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Arianna?
- About 1 in every 1,215 US girls born in 2025 was named Arianna — 1,323 in all.
- Will my child share the name Arianna with classmates?
- Arianna will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Arianna
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Maisie#233 · Andrea#235 · Palmer#232 · Nyla#236 · Cataleya#237 · Wren#231 · Alexandra#237 · Lucille#237
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Arianna? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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