Glenna
Feminine · “valley”
Glenna is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 25,624 girls against 5 boys since 1880.
Glenna is a valley made feminine. Glenn is the Gaelic word for a narrow valley, and it is one of the few Scottish landscape words that English took whole rather than translating.
How old is the name Glenna?
Glenna was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Glenna alive today was born around 1942, making them about 83 years old. About 12,500 people named Glenna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Glenna most popular?
Glenna peaked in 1931, reaching #256 nationally. Today it ranks #11932, 11,676 places below that high. See the whole 1931 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From gleann to Glenna
The story of Glenna
Gleann appears in hundreds of Scottish place names, and families from them carried Glen and Glenn as surnames. The surname crossed into given-name use in twentieth-century America and rose sharply through the 1930s and 1940s. Feminines were built on it in the usual way — Glenna, Glenda, Glynis — and Glenna appears in the American registers from the 1900s, peaking in the mid-1940s.
Meaning
valley, glen
Through Glenn, from the Scottish Gaelic gleann, 'narrow valley'. English borrowed the word itself as 'glen' as well as taking the surname, which is unusual — most Gaelic landscape terms were translated rather than adopted. The -a ending is the ordinary English feminine addition.
How the name formed
- gleann
- Glenn
- Glenna
Related forms: Gleann · Glenys · Glenda
Pronouncing Glenna
GLEN-uh
Two syllables, stress on the first. No variation between English accents.
Nicknames for Glenna
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
- 1951645 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #256reached in 1931
- Change vs 2021
- +16.7%7 in 2025, from 6
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.
Glenna in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Gleann in Scottish Gaelic — related form
- Glenys in Welsh — related form
- Glenda in English — related form
Glennas among us
people named Glenna are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 229,610 born in 2025 was named Glenna
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Edythe test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Glenna's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Edythe climbed just as high around 1915, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Edythe's path sketches the road Glenna is walking now.
Glenna sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Glenna beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Glenna in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is concrete, transparent and easy to picture.
- It sits in a coherent family of Gaelic and Welsh valley names.
- Two clean syllables with no pronunciation risk.
- The stem reads as masculine, so the -a is doing all the work.
- It is period-coded to the middle of the twentieth century.
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What they receive
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Glenna
Feminine · #11932 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Glennas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 12,500 people named Glenna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Glenna in 2025?
- Glenna ranks #11932 among US girl names in 2025, with 7 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Glenna?
- About 1 in every 229,610 US girls born in 2025 was named Glenna — 7 in all.
- Will my child share the name Glenna with classmates?
- Glenna will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Glenna
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Caylie#11932 · Tyasia#11932 · Daytona#11932 · Talon#11932 · Kailan#11932 · Jourdyn#11932 · Madysen#11932 · Harini#11932
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Glenna? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Glenna and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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