Helen
The girl's name Helen has been in the national records since 1880, with 1,027,307 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 461st. About 210,000 Helens are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 73.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Helen boys named Helen
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,027,307
- Estimated living today
- 210,000
- Median age today
- 73
- Peak year
- 1918
- Best rank
- 2nd
- Rank in 2025
- 461st
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,024,202 / 3,105
How old the living Helens are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,027,307 babies given the name since 1880, about 210,000 are alive — 20 in every hundred. Roughly 14,000 of them are children and 140,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1952 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Ancient Greek
From French Hélène, from Latin Helena, from Ancient Greek Ἑλένη.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Helens
- Helen Keller (1880–1968)American deafblind author, political activist, lecturer, scholar
- Helen Mirren (born 1945)British actress
- Helen Clark (born 1950)Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1999 to 2008
- Helen Hunt (born 1963)American actress
- Helen Hayes (1900–1993)American actress
- Helen McCrory (1968–2021)British actress
- Helen Fielding (born 1958)English novelist and screenwriter
- Helen Sharman (born 1963)British chemist who became the first Briton in space
People named Helen with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Helen is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Helen is most concentrated in Pennsylvania (2.1×), West Virginia (1.9×), Montana (1.7×), North Dakota (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1918
The most popular girls’ names the year Helen peaked:
Helen elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland girls | Helen | 8,190 | 12th |
| New Zealand girls | Helen | 7,775 | 13th |
| England and Wales girls | Helen | 3,413 | 108th |
| Scotland girls | Helen | 3,308 | 41st |
| Norway girls | Helen | 2,801 | 93rd |
| France girls | Helen +1 spelling | 745 | 972nd |
| Italy girls | Helen | 536 | — |
| Switzerland girls | Helen | 301 | 393rd |
| Belgium girls | Helen | 148 | 474th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Helen | 131 | 132nd |
| Poland girls | Helen | 101 birth registrations | 264th |
| France boys | Helen | 70 | 2,467th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Helen: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Helen | 276 | 0.022% | 248th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Helen | 18 | 0.004% | 463rd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Helen | 6 | 0.009% | 112th |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Helen | 1 | 0.027% | 11th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Helen is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.03% of children were given it – 91 of them.
Helen: rank by region
In 2025, Helen was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Helen | 753 | 6 |
In 2022, Helen was given 2 times or more in 3 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Helen | 247 | 2 |
| Śląskie | Helen | 217 | 3 |
| Wielkopolskie | Helen | 256 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Helen by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 92 | 133rd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Helen among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Helen | 1,688 | 2,739 |
| Finland girls | Helen +2 spellings | 581 | 1,662 |
| the Netherlands boys | Helen | — | 15 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Helen lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,319 women called Helen were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Helen | 134 | 0.130 | 652 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Helen | 71 | 0.128 | 762 |
| Palmas, Las | Helen | 68 | 0.115 | 886 |
| Málaga | Helen | 101 | 0.110 | 671 |
| Balears, Illes | Helen | 54 | 0.086 | 872 |
| Almería | Helen | 27 | 0.072 | 1,010 |
Listed in 34 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 18 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Helen against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.