Edna
Feminine · “delight”
Edna is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 295,116 girls against 1,042 boys since 1880. See Edna as a boy name
Edna and Eden are the same word. The Hebrew behind the name means delight, pleasure, luxuriance — and the garden takes its name from the same root, which is why the place is called delight rather than anything about apples or gates.
How old is the name Edna?
Edna was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Edna alive today was born around 1921, making them about 104 years old. About 56,500 people named Edna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Edna most popular?
Edna peaked in 1899, reaching #11 nationally. Today it ranks #2458, 2,447 places below that high. See the whole 1899 chart.
Where it comes from
From a Hebrew root meaning delight or luxuriance to Edna
The story of Edna
Edna St Vincent Millay was named after the hospital where her uncle's life had been saved days before she was born. She won a Pulitzer at thirty-one, was the most famous poet in America in the 1920s, wrote sonnets while everybody around her was abandoning form, and lived a life that the newspapers found more interesting than the work. My candle burns at both ends is hers, and so is the line about it not lasting the night but giving a lovely light — four lines that have been quoted at every generation since and are usually attributed to nobody.
Meaning
delight, pleasure
The name appears in the Book of Tobit, which sits in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles and outside the Protestant one, where Edna is the wife of Raguel and the mother of Sarah. The connection to Eden is real: both come from a root about luxuriance and pleasure, and the garden's name is generally read as a description rather than a location. English took the name up in the nineteenth century along with a great many other biblical rarities, and it went to the very top of the American charts.
How the name formed
- a Hebrew root meaning delight or luxuriance
- Eden takes its name from the same word
- Edna appears in the Book of Tobit
- English revives it in the nineteenth century
- an American peak at the very end of that century
Related forms: Ednah · Eithne · Edna
Pronouncing Edna
ED-nuh
Two syllables, stress at the front. There is no competing reading anywhere in the English-speaking world.
Nicknames for Edna
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
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 19188,698 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #11reached in 1899
- Change vs 2022
- −20.0%72 in 2025, from 90
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.
Edna in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Ednah in Hebrew — same name
- Eithne in Irish — related form
- Edna in Spanish — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: Ohio, Texas, California.
Ednas among us
people named Edna are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 22,323 born in 2025 was named Edna
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
Edna has held the top-100 across 6 different decades — it has never depended on fashion, and names like that read the same at any age.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Edna is headed
Edna should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium 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.
Edna beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Edna in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Four letters, two syllables, and impossible to misspell or mispronounce.
- The meaning is warm, concrete and easy to explain to a child.
- It is one of the names of its generation most likely to come back, and it has not yet.
- It reads as a great-grandmother's name and the revival has not arrived.
- A well-known cartoon character and a comic stage persona both carry it.
- It was enormous once, which means anyone over eighty knew several.
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What they receive
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Edna
Feminine · #2458 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Ednas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 56,500 people named Edna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Edna in 2025?
- Edna ranks #2458 among US girl names in 2025, with 72 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Edna?
- About 1 in every 22,323 US girls born in 2025 was named Edna — 72 in all.
- Will my child share the name Edna with classmates?
- Edna will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Edna
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Samia#2458 · Zaniya#2458 · Roxy#2458 · Jailyn#2458 · Jesse#2458 · Alanis#2458 · Aiyla#2458 · Keyli#2458
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Edna? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Edna and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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