Darlena
Feminine · “darling”
Darlena swaps a final e for an a, and the swap moves the name into different company. The -ene ending is English and mid-century; the -ena ending is Latin, and it puts the name alongside Helena, Serena and Rowena. Nothing audible changes, and the association changes entirely, which is most of what American respellings are for.
How old is the name Darlena?
Darlena first appears in US birth records in 1920 — 105 years ago. The typical Darlena alive today was born around 1963, making them about 62 years old. About 1,300 people named Darlena are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Darlena most popular?
Darlena peaked in 1958, reaching #1527 nationally. See the whole 1958 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From An Old English word for a much-loved person to Darlena
The story of Darlena
The best-known person to carry the base word as a surname rowed a boat. In eighteen thirty-eight a steamship broke up on rocks off the Northumberland coast, and the daughter of the lighthouse keeper on a nearby island spotted survivors at dawn and went out with her father in an open boat to get them. The press made her the most famous woman in Britain within weeks: there were portraits, poems, souvenir hair clippings and requests for locks of her hair, and she found the attention unbearable. She died of tuberculosis four years later at twenty-six. It is generally taken as the first case of British media celebrity in the modern sense, complete with the intrusion, and it attached her surname permanently to a particular kind of quiet courage.
Meaning
darling
The base is the English word, which has been in the language for a thousand years with almost no change in form or sense. The ending is a suffix with no meaning of its own; in the -ena form it borrows the shape of Latin feminines without borrowing any Latin. So the name means what the word means, and the ending is doing the work of turning a term of endearment into something that can go on a certificate.
How the name formed
- An Old English word for a much-loved person
- Used as a surname and then as a first name
- Darlene built with an English ending
- Darlena, moving the ending into Latin company
Pronouncing Darlena
dar-LEE-nuh
Three syllables with the stress in the middle. The a ending adds a syllable that the e ending does not have, so this is one of the respellings that changes the sound rather than only the look.
Nicknames for Darlena
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
- 1920
- Most girls named
- 196352 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1527reached in 1958
- Change vs 2008
- 0.0%5 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.
Darlenas among us
people named Darlena 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
Darlena 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 portable and entirely international short form.
- The extra syllable gives it a softer rhythm than the shorter form of the name.
- The meaning is warm, clear and needs no explaining at all.
- Darlene is far commoner and this spelling will be converted into it.
- The name is an affectionate word, which some people find charming and others find a lot to carry.
- It is firmly of the middle of the twentieth century.
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Darlena
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Darlenas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,300 people named Darlena are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Darlena in 2025?
- Darlena is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Darlena with classmates?
- Darlena will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More D names
The most-given names starting with D, all years combined.
Dorothy#421 · Donna#1962 · Deborah#862 · Debra#4460 · Diane#2607 · Doris#2895 · Denise#1673 · Danielle#549
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Darlena? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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