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Girl · Greek, through Hungarian
Ilona
Say it: EE-loh-nah
Meaning
Hungarian form of Helen, taken into Polish, Czech and Slovak.
Likelythe main view, with some doubt.
Borrowed from Hungarian and common in Poland and Czechoslovakia in the 20th century.
Its wave through time
Most used in the 1940s
In the United States
- 3,207 babies given this name since 1909
- At its height in 1940, about 1 in 15,200 girls
- 24 babies in 2020
Through the ages
- The High and Late Middle Ages1100 to 1450
- The Renaissance1400 to 1600
- The Age of Revolutions1750 to 1837
- Victorian and Belle Époque1837 to 1914
- The Modern Age1880 to today
Used by
The family of the name
Other spellings: Ili, Ica
| Hungarian | Ilona |
|---|---|
| Czech | Ilona |
| English | Helen |
| Romanian | Elena |
| Greek | Eleni |
Famous bearers
- Ilona Zrínyi, defender of Munkács castle
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- National birth statistics of European countries source
- Royal and noble genealogies
- Parish baptism registers
- 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.