Melana
Feminine · “dark”
Greek melas is black, and it is still all over English. Melancholy is black bile, one of the four humors that were once thought to govern temper. Melanin is the pigment that darkens skin. Melanesia is the islands of the dark-skinned people. Melana belongs to that root.
How old is the name Melana?
Melana first appears in US birth records in 1947 — 78 years ago. The typical Melana alive today was born around 2001, making them about 24 years old. About 800 people named Melana are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Melana most popular?
Melana peaked in 2004, reaching #2396 nationally. Today it ranks #10917, 8,521 places below that high. See the whole 2004 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From melas to Melana
The story of Melana
Greek used melas for anything dark, and Greek medicine used it for one of the four humors: black bile, melan chole, the fluid held responsible for a settled gloom, which is why melancholy still means what it does two thousand years after the physiology was abandoned. The name Melania came from the same word and belonged to a wealthy Roman family in the fourth and fifth centuries, two of whose women were made saints. It went to France as Melanie, and from French into English in the eighteenth century. The Roman name almost certainly described coloring rather than mood, which is how most personal names built on color words worked.
Meaning
dark, black
From Greek melas, feminine melaina, black or dark. It produced the name Melania, borne by two Roman saints of the same family, and the modern Melanie and Melany. Melana is a shortened American spelling of the same word.
How the name formed
- melas
- Melania
- Melanie
- Melana
Related forms: Melanie · Melania · Melania
Pronouncing Melana
meh-LAH-nuh
Three syllables, stress in the middle. muh-LAY-nuh, with a long a, is also used. The spelling gives no way to choose, so the family decides and then spends a lifetime saying which.
Nicknames for Melana
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
- 1947
- Most girls named
- 200471 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2396reached in 2004
- Change vs 2023
- +14.3%8 in 2025, from 7
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.
Melana in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Melanie in French — related form
- Melania in Italian — related form
- Melania in Greek — same name
Melanas among us
people named Melana are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 200,908 born in 2025 was named Melana
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 Keela test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Melana's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Keela climbed just as high around 1974, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Keela's path sketches the road Melana is walking now.
Melana 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
Melana beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Melana in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A settled Greek meaning with a whole shelf of English words to point at.
- Two short forms that sound nothing like each other and both stand alone.
- Three open syllables that work in English, Spanish and Italian alike.
- Melania and Melanie are both commoner, so this spelling will be corrected toward them.
- The middle vowel is said two ways and the spelling settles neither.
- The meaning is dark, which is a plain description and reads differently to different families.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Melana
Feminine · #10917 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Melanas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Melana are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Melana in 2025?
- Melana ranks #10917 among US girl names in 2025, with 8 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Melana?
- About 1 in every 200,908 US girls born in 2025 was named Melana — 8 in all.
- Will my child share the name Melana with classmates?
- Melana will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Melana
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Edythe#10917 · Tessie#10917 · Drusilla#10917 · Eugenie#10917 · Ivah#10917 · Karri#10917 · Claribel#10917 · Myrtle#10917
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Melana? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Melana and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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