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Girl · Old Slavic
Ludmila
Say it: LOOD-mih-lah
Meaning
From Slavic ľud 'people' and mil 'dear, gracious'.
Certainscholars agree on this meaning.
Venerated in Bohemia since the 10th century as the grandmother of Saint Wenceslas, it was widely revived in Czech and Russian use in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Its wave through time
Rare in the records
In the United States
- 246 babies given this name since 1904
- At its height in 1904, about 1 in 55,100 girls
- 8 babies in 2020
Through the ages
- The Early Middle Ages400 to 800
- The High and Late Middle Ages1100 to 1450
- Victorian and Belle Époque1837 to 1914
- The Modern Age1880 to today
Used by
The family of the name
Other spellings: Lidmila
| Polish | Ludmiła |
|---|---|
| Russian | Lyudmila |
| Ukrainian | Liudmyla |
| Serbian | Ljudmila |
| Bulgarian | Lyudmila |
| Slovak | Ľudmila |
| German | Ludmilla |
Famous bearers
- Saint Ludmila, Bohemian duchess and martyr
- Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Soviet sniper
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- Lives of the saints and early Christian martyrologies
- Medieval Slavic chronicles and charters
- Calendars of saints and name days
- 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.