Yulanda
Feminine · “violet”
Yulanda is one of the American spellings of Yolanda, written the way the first syllable is actually said. The name has a long European history behind it, and in America it also has a particular association: the first child of a family whose private life became public property in the winter the modern civil rights movement began.
How old is the name Yulanda?
Yulanda first appears in US birth records in 1947 — 78 years ago. The typical Yulanda alive today was born around 1970, making them about 55 years old. About 1,000 people named Yulanda are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Yulanda most popular?
Yulanda peaked in 1968, reaching #1406 nationally. See the whole 1968 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From a medieval European name of uncertain meaning to Yulanda
The story of Yulanda
Yolanda King was three weeks old when a seamstress in Montgomery refused to give up her seat and her father, the new minister at Dexter Avenue, was asked to lead the boycott that followed. Six weeks after that a bomb went off on the porch of the house while she and her mother were inside; both were unhurt, and a crowd gathered outside ready for a fight until her father came out and told them to go home. She grew up to be an actress and a speaker who spent her life explaining, patiently, that she had been a baby asleep in a back room and remembered none of it.
Meaningscholars disagree
violet, though the reading is a guess
Yolanda comes through French and Italian from a medieval name whose connection to the word for violet is traditional rather than demonstrated. Nobody has been able to close the case, and the flower reading may be an attractive later explanation rather than an origin. The American spelling with a u changes nothing about the sound; it simply writes the first syllable the way English readers pronounce it instead of the way the European spelling records it.
How the name formed
- a medieval European name of uncertain meaning
- Yolande in French and Iolanda in Italian
- Yolanda established in American use
- Yulanda appears as a phonetic respelling in the 1940s
- peaks in the late 1960s
Related forms: Yolanda · Yolande · Iolanda · Jolan
Pronouncing Yulanda
yoo-LAN-duh
Three syllables with the stress in the middle. This spelling is the phonetic one: the o in Yolanda is not an o sound in American speech, and the u simply says so.
Nicknames for Yulanda
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
- 196864 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1406reached in 1968
- Change vs 1986
- −14.3%6 in 1988, 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.
Yulanda in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Yolanda in Spanish — spelling variant
- Yolande in French — same name
- Iolanda in Italian — same name
- Jolan in Hungarian — related form
Yulandas among us
people named Yulanda 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
Yulanda 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
- The spelling makes the pronunciation obvious, which the standard version does not.
- It is a genuinely old European name in a modern American dress.
- The rhythm is strong and it carries well when called.
- Yolanda is far commoner and will be written instead on most documents.
- The violet meaning is traditional rather than established, and it may not be true.
- It is closely associated with the middle decades of the last century.
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Yulanda
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Yulandas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,000 people named Yulanda are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Yulanda in 2025?
- Yulanda is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Yulanda with classmates?
- Yulanda will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More Y names
The most-given names starting with Y, all years combined.
Yvonne#2051 · Yolanda#3211 · Yvette#1622 · Yesenia#1896 · Yasmin#955 · Yasmine#1183 · Yaretzi#670 · Yadira#3832
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Yulanda? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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