Willena
Feminine · “resolute protection”
Willena is one of the many women's names English built on William, and the best-known woman in that family did something with it that almost nobody has: she took the man's name outright. Willa Cather was christened Wilella, called herself William through her teens, and settled on the version she is remembered by only in her twenties.
How old is the name Willena?
Willena first appears in US birth records in 1884 — 141 years ago. The typical Willena alive today was born around 1936, making them about 89 years old. About 400 people named Willena are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Willena most popular?
Willena peaked in 1884, reaching #1024 nationally. See the whole 1884 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From a Germanic compound of will and helmet to Willena
The story of Willena
Willa Cather was born in Virginia, moved to the Nebraska prairie as a child, and spent her adolescence in a small town where she cut her hair short, wore men's clothes, signed herself William Cather Junior and announced an intention to study medicine. She went to university, became a magazine editor in New York, and did not publish the novels she is known for until she was nearly forty. They are almost all about the same thing: people from somewhere else trying to make a life on land that does not care about them. She left instructions that her letters were never to be published, which was ignored seventy years later.
Meaning
resolute protection, at one remove
William is a Germanic compound of the word for will or desire and the word for a helmet, so it is about determination and protection welded together. English has made more women's names out of it than out of almost any other man's name — Wilhelmina, Willa, Wilma, Willie, Billie and this one among them — and most of them were assembled in America rather than inherited from Europe. Willena adds a Latin-looking ending to the front of the name and belongs to that American workshop.
How the name formed
- a Germanic compound of will and helmet
- William becomes the commonest man's name in England
- English builds a large family of women's forms from it
- Willena appears in American records in the 1880s
- out of use by the middle of the last century
Related forms: Wilhelmina · Willa · Wilma
Pronouncing Willena
wil-EE-nuh
Three syllables with the weight in the middle. Some families front it, WIL-uh-nuh, which is the older reading and now the rarer of the two.
Nicknames for Willena
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
- 1884
- Most girls named
- 192428 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1024reached in 1884
- Change vs 1984
- +12.5%9 in 1990, from 8
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.
Willena in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Wilhelmina in Dutch — related form
- Willa in English — related form
- Wilma in English — related form
Willenas among us
people named Willena 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
Willena 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
- Willa and Lena are both waiting inside it and both are thoroughly current again.
- It is soft and readable while being genuinely rare in the record.
- The name behind it is one of the most established in the language.
- It will be written Willa, Wilma and Wilhelmina by people who have heard it once.
- The stress placement is unsettled and she will hear it both ways.
- It belongs to the oldest layer of the American record and has had no revival.
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Willena
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Willenas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 400 people named Willena are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Willena in 2025?
- Willena is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Willena with classmates?
- Willena will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More W names
The most-given names starting with W, all years combined.
Wanda#5917 · Wendy#1341 · Willie#10107 · Wilma#3645 · Whitney#1043 · Willow#44 · Winifred#922 · Willa#422
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Willena? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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