Charlena
Feminine · “a free man”
Charlene closes with a French ending and this swaps it for a Latin one. The difference is a single letter and it changes which family the name appears to belong to: -ene puts it with Darlene and Marlene, -ena with Helena and Magdalena, and the two sets sound quite different in the ear.
How old is the name Charlena?
Charlena first appears in US birth records in 1903 — 122 years ago. The typical Charlena alive today was born around 1968, making them about 57 years old. About 1,400 people named Charlena are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Charlena most popular?
Charlena peaked in 1903, reaching #1592 nationally. See the whole 1903 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Charles to Charlena
The story of Charlena
The man at the root of the name is one of the four kings in a deck of cards. French card-makers assigned identities to the court cards in the fifteenth century — David for spades, Alexander for clubs, Caesar for diamonds and Charlemagne for hearts — and the names were printed on the cards themselves for a long time. English decks dropped the labels and kept the pictures, so the four kings in every pack are still, by inheritance, four specific men from history and legend, and almost nobody dealing them knows which is which.
Meaning
a free man, at several removes
The Germanic word behind the man's name described someone free but of no rank. The sense passes through a French masculine, a French feminine and a Latin ending, arriving here fairly thin.
How the name formed
- Charles
- Charlene
- Charlena
Pronouncing Charlena
shar-LEE-nuh
Three syllables with the stress in the middle. The French ending gives two and puts the weight at the back, which is the real difference.
Nicknames for Charlena
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
- 197846 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1592reached in 1903
- Change vs 2013
- +20.0%6 in 2015, 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.
Charlenas among us
people named Charlena are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Charlena sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- Lena sits inside it as a short form used across half of Europe.
- The extra syllable gives it a fuller shape than the French form.
- The rhythm is even and the name carries well.
- Charlene is far commoner and this gets corrected constantly.
- The syllable count differs from the standard form and strangers will guess.
- It is closely tied to the middle decades of the last century.
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Charlena
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Charlenas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,400 people named Charlena are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Charlena in 2025?
- Charlena is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Charlena with classmates?
- Charlena will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More C names
The most-given names starting with C, all years combined.
Carol#2239 · Cynthia#1013 · Catherine#313 · Christine#1272 · Carolyn#1222 · Christina#770 · Charlotte#2 · Cheryl#4352
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Charlena? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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