The name Helen is the English form of the Greek ‘Helene’, probably from Greek ‘helene’ meaning ‘torch’ or ‘corposant’. Some suggest, it is related to ‘selene’ meaning ‘moon’.
Helen is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The name Helen 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, Helen ranks 392. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 5 were named Helen. In total, there are currently 897,324 people – children, adults and seniors – named Helen living in the United States, which is approximately 0.27 % of the entire population.
The name Helen is the English form of the Greek ‘Helene’, probably from Greek ‘helene’ meaning ‘torch’ or ‘corposant’. Some suggest, it is related to ‘selene’ meaning ‘moon’.
Around 1900,.. Helen was in rare cases used as a boy's name.
History tends to focus on the most famous and best. But even those who play second fiddle leave their mark: Helen is one of those names without which the orchestra would be incomplete. In fact, Helen has reached the SmartGenius top ranking #2 more than once, although the last time was some while ago, way back in the last century in 1919. But even though the peak of its popularity was many decades ago, the name Helen has been given to newborn girls every year since records began. Helen is of exceptional enduring popularity, conveying the special vibes of the20th century.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Helen was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
The popularity of the name Helen peaked long ago, but the name has nevertheless arrived in the 21st century. In 2022, it ranked #388 in our statistics - perhaps a far cry from when your grandparents or great-grandparents were kids and Helen made it into the top ten more than once, but still: traditional names often prove to be perennial favorites - so, maybe it's only a matter of time before Helen tops out again.
Helen is one of the most common names in the U.S. – in all states combined, 896,726 women would currently turn around if you called out HELEN really loud. Across all states and age groups, this lands Helen on position 16 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top female names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above. With so many women named Helen, it’s no surprise that the name is widely used in every single state in the U.S., but would you have guessed that it’s especially popular in Pennsylvania? Here, 1,22% of all female residents bear the name Helen – that is a total of 102,442 women with this popular name and no other state has as many women named Helen relative to its population. But that’s not all the popularity: in Pennsylvania Helen belongs to the top 10 of all womens names – the 102,442 elevate their name up to place #5 in the SmartGenius ranking of the most common female names for Pennsylvania.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter H is quite rare as a first letter for girls' names: only 1.7% of all common girls' names in the US begin with H. The most common first letters of girls' names, by the way, are A, S and M, while U, X and Q are the least common initials of girls' names.
With five letters, the name Helen is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five letters. 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.
Therefore: As 1.7% of all girls' names begin with an H, this initial letter is less common than the other letters on average. Interesting detail: of all the names that begin with an H, Helen is the most common.
If your name is Helen 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 Helen, you can simply say:
Hat
Elephant
Lion
Elephant
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Helen
Helen
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
H
E
L
E
N
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.
H
E
L
E
N
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. Helen sounds like this:
