Athena is a first name for girls.
The name Athena isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Athena ranks 126. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 14 were named Athena. In the entire USA, approximately 40,728 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Athena. That is 0.01 % of all living Americans.
Athena is of Greek origin and refers to the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom, war, and crafts. In Greek mythology, Athena was the daughter of Zeus and Metis, and was considered one of the most powerful and revered of the twelve Olympian gods and goddesses.
The Greek capital... Athens is the namesake of the goddess Athena, who was the city's patron goddess.
This is a real surprise! Athena is a name that has been around for a long time, but only really took off in the 21st century. In the year 2022, it reached its best rank at #78 according to our SmartGenius statistics. This makes Athena much more popular than in previous generations, where it was so rare for several years that it was not even recorded in the statistics. While the name Athena was observed for the first time ever in 1902, it now seems to have found its place in the zeitgeist of the 21st century. In 2022, the year of its highest popularity, the name was given a total of 3,008 times. Whether this beautiful girls' name can repeat or even exceed its previous best ranking in the coming years remains to be seen, but the prospects are promising given the positive trend.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Athena was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
The name Athena may not be in the top rankings of the most popular girls’ names, but it is one of the few female given names, along with only 536 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Athena is apparently especially popular in Nevada. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular women’s names here either, one in 755 women in Nevada is called Athena. In total, that’s 592 women who feel addressed when the name Athena is shouted loudly across Nevada and who ensure that their name makes it to #215 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common female names in this nice state. If you asked all women in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Athena as the answer a total of 40,728 times. This places Athena at #584 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular women’s names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living women across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Athena as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter A is the most popular first letter for girls’ names. 11.8% of all common girls’ names in the US start with this letter. The second most common first letter in girls' names is S.
With six letters, the name Athena is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that if 11.8% of all girls' names start with an A, this initial letter occurs over three times as often as all other letters on average. And, by the way, of all the girls' names that begin with the letter A, the name Ashley is the most common.
If your name is Athena and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Athena, you can simply say:
Apple
Tiger
Hat
Elephant
Nut
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Athena
Athena
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
A
T
H
E
N
A
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
A
T
H
E
N
A
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Athena sounds like this:
