Girl · Scottish Gaelic element, 18th-century literary coinage
Fiona
Say it: fee-OH-nuh
Meaning
Popularized, and probably coined, by James Macpherson in his Ossian poems of the 1760s, from Gaelic fionn 'white, fair'.
Likelythe main view, with some doubt.
Its wave through time
Popular now
In the United States
- 29,767 babies given this name since 1942
- At its height in 2017, about 1 in 1,000 girls
- 1,076 babies in 2020
Through the ages
Used by
Famous bearers
- 'Fiona Macleod', pen name of Scottish writer William Sharp
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- Well-known works of literature
- National census records of the 19th and 20th centuries
- United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source
Meanings and histories are compiled from the study of names and their languages and checked by a second review.
Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.