Edna
Masculine · “delight”
Edna is given to girls far more often — 295,116 girls against 1,042 boys since 1880. See Edna as a girl 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 first appears in US birth records in 1881 — 144 years ago. The typical Edna alive today was born around 1922, making them about 103 years old. About 100 people named Edna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Edna most popular?
Edna peaked in 1899, reaching #521 nationally. 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
- 1881
- Most boys named
- 192738 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #521reached in 1899
- Change vs 1965
- 0.0%5 in 1974, 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.
Edna in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Ednah in Hebrew — same name
- Eithne in Irish — related form
- Edna in Spanish — same name
Ednas among us
people named Edna 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
Edna 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
- 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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Edna
Masculine
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 100 people named Edna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Edna in 2025?
- Edna is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Edna with classmates?
- Edna will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More E names
The most-given names starting with E, all years combined.
Edward#224 · Eric#273 · Ethan#24 · Eugene#943 · Elijah#7 · Ernest#1038 · Earl#2230 · Evan#153
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Edna? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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