← Back to The High and Late Middle Ages
Girl · Russian
Svetlana
Say it: svyet-LAH-nah
Meaning
From Russian svet 'light' or svetly 'bright'.
Certainscholars agree on this meaning.
Popularised by Vasily Zhukovsky's ballad Svetlana (1813) and then by the Soviet period, when it became very common.
Its wave through time
Rare in the records
In the United States
- 818 babies given this name since 1967
- At its height in 2007, about 1 in 37,700 girls
- 27 babies in 2020
Through the ages
Used by
The family of the name
Other spellings: Светлана, Sveta
| Ukrainian | Svitlana |
|---|---|
| Serbian | Svetlana |
| Bulgarian | Svetlana |
| Polish | Swietłana |
Famous bearers
- Svetlana Alexievich, Belarusian Nobel laureate
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- Well-known works of literature
- National birth statistics of European countries source
- 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.