Sienna
Feminine · “From Siena”
Sienna is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 39,877 girls against 10 boys since 1880.
Sienna began as a place — the Tuscan hill city of Siena — and then became a color, the warm reddish-brown earth dug from the hills around it and sold to painters across Europe as sienna. It is a word most English speakers have met in a paintbox long before they meet it on a person, which is why it rarely needs spelling out loud. Three easy syllables, all vowels open: see-EN-uh.
How old is the name Sienna?
Sienna first appears in US birth records in 1960 — 65 years ago. The typical Sienna is a kid of about 10 — this name's wave is very recent. About 39,500 people named Sienna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Sienna most popular?
Sienna peaked in 2025, reaching #94 nationally. Today it ranks #94, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Where it comes from
From Siena (Tuscan city) to Sienna
The story of Sienna
Siena sits in Tuscany, and the clay-rich earth of its countryside was quarried for a pigment that painters simply called terra di Siena — Siena earth. English took it as 'sienna', raw or burnt, and it has been a standard artist's and crayon color ever since. The personal name came later, in English rather than Italian, spelled with a doubled n as the color word is. It has been carried in recent decades by British actresses on both sides of the Atlantic, and it charts today in England, Scotland and the United States alike.
Meaning
From Siena, and by way of the pigment, a reddish-brown earth color
The route is clear: the Italian city gave its name to the earth pigment, and the pigment and city together gave the given name. Where the city's own name came from is a separate and unsettled question — Etruscan and Gallic origins have both been argued, and neither has won.
Cultural footprint
Sienna Miller (b. 1981) — Boho style icon and American Sniper star
Source: Wikidata — the one source on this page that is not an official agency.
How the name formed
- SienaTuscan city
- terra di Sienapigment
- siennaEnglish color word
- Siennagiven name
Related forms: Siena · Sienne · Siena
Pronouncing Sienna
see-EN-uh
Said the same way as the color, with the stress in the middle. Italian gives the city three syllables too, closer to SYEH-nah, but English speakers reliably land on see-EN-uh without being told.
Nicknames for Sienna
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
- 1960
- Most girls named
- 20252,659 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #94reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +25.5%2,659 in 2025, from 2,118
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.
Sienna in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Siena in Italian — spelling variant
- Sienne in French — related form
- Siena in Spanish — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, New York, Texas. International figures from Office for National Statistics, National Records of Scotland. Sources
Siennas among us
people named Sienna are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 604 born in 2025 was named Sienna
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Sienna
- #94
- Sienna on the 2025 chart
- #87
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Sienna went to 2,659 girls in 2025, but Siena and Cienna are the same name said out loud. Together the 6 spellings went to 3,293, which makes it the 87th most-given girls’ name of the year — 7 places above the chart.
and 3 rarer spellings.
About 1 girl in 488 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 604 for Sienna itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Gracie test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Sienna's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Gracie climbed just as high around 2005, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Gracie's path sketches the road Sienna is walking now.
Sienna is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Sienna is headed
Sienna should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High 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.
Sienna beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Sienna in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Reads correctly on sight for English speakers, because the color word is already familiar from paintboxes and crayon sets.
- Charts in the United States, England and Scotland at once, so it travels across English-speaking countries without adjustment.
- Common enough to be recognized, uncommon enough that a child is unlikely to share it with a classmate.
- Three clear syllables with no silent letters and no consonant clusters, which makes it easy for a small child to say and to write.
- Siena and Sienna both exist — the city takes one n, the color and the name take two. Expect a lifetime of gentle corrections in the other direction.
- It is climbing steadily, so a child named Sienna now may meet more of them later than the current classroom odds suggest.
- The name's wave is very recent, so nearly all Siennas in the US are children or young adults. That means little in practice, but it does read as a young name for now.
- It sits close to Sierra and Vienna in sound, and hearers occasionally reach for the wrong one on a first introduction.
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What they receive
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Sienna
Feminine · #94 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Siennas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 39,500 people named Sienna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Sienna?
- Sienna is the most-used spelling in US records — 2,659 of the 3,293 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Siena and Cienna.
- How popular is the name Sienna in 2025?
- Sienna ranks #94 among US girl names in 2025, with 2,659 babies given the name.
- How common is the name Sienna?
- About 1 in every 604 US girls born in 2025 was named Sienna — 2,659 in all.
- Will my child share the name Sienna with classmates?
- Sienna will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Sienna
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kinsley#93 · Jade#95 · Caroline#96 · Lydia#92 · Everly#91 · Quinn#97 · Amara#98 · Sarah#90
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Sienna? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Sienna and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration; international figures from national statistics agencies. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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