Ilona
Ilona is a girl's name that peaked in 1946, when it was the 818th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 3,832nd. About 2,600 Ilonas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 55.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Ilona
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 3,332
- Estimated living today
- 2,600
- Median age today
- 55
- Peak year
- 1946
- Best rank
- 818th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,832nd
- First recorded
- 1909
How old the living Ilonas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 3,332 babies given the name since 1909, about 2,600 are alive — 77 in every hundred. Roughly 480 of them are children and 950 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1970 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 Hungarian Ilona. A rare variant of Helen or Helena.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Ilonas
- Ilona Staller (born 1951)Hungarian-born Italian pornographic actress, singer and politician
- Ilona Elek (1907–1988)Hungarian fencer
- Ilona Slupianek (born 1956)East German shot putter
- Ilona Gusenbauer (born 1947)Austrian high jumper
- Ilona Zrínyi (1643–1703)Princess Consort of Transylvania and Croatian noblewoman
- Ilona Novák (1925–2019)Hungarian swimmer
- Ilona Korstin (born 1980)Russian basketball player
- Ilona Koutny (born 1953)Esperantist and linguist
People named Ilona with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Ilona is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ilona is most concentrated in New York (4.2×), New Jersey (3.5×), California (2.2×), Pennsylvania (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1946
The most popular girls’ names the year Ilona peaked:
Ilona elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Ilona | 13,695 | 48th |
| Poland girls | Ilona | 1,986 birth registrations | 71st |
| Belgium girls | Ilona | 1,325 | 108th |
| Switzerland girls | Ilona | 426 | 269th |
| Norway girls | Ilona | 312 | 287th |
| England and Wales girls | Ilona | 244 | 1,031st |
| Scotland girls | Ilona | 32 | 473rd |
| Ireland girls | Ilona | 6 | 937th |
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.
Ilona: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Ilona | 249 | 0.020% | 312th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Ilona | 176 | 0.040% | 112th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Ilona | 1 | 0.002% | 200th |
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, Ilona is most concentrated in Valais, where 0.05% of children were given it – 33 of them.
Ilona: rank by region
In 2025, Ilona was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Ilona | 836 | 5 |
| Wallonia | Ilona | 399 | 6 |
In 2025, Ilona was given 2 times or more in 4 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Ilona | 190 | 3 |
| Mazowieckie | Ilona | 326 | 2 |
| Opolskie | Ilona | 123 | 2 |
| Pomorskie | Ilona | 180 | 3 |
In 2021, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Ilona appears in the lists for Province of Liège (128th) and Brussels-Capital Region (275th).
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.
Ilona 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Ilona | 5,131 | 25,069 |
| the Netherlands girls | Ilona | 8,956 | 11,113 |
| the Netherlands boys | Ilona | — | 77 |
Among girls in Finland this is mostly a middle name: of the 25,069 who carry it, 5,131 go by it.
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026, the Netherlands on 1 January 2018 – 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 Ilona lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 831 women called Ilona 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 | Ilona | 115 | 0.112 | 722 |
| Girona | Ilona | 37 | 0.089 | 882 |
| Lleida | Ilona | 18 | 0.081 | 933 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Ilona | 38 | 0.069 | 1,228 |
| Málaga | Ilona | 58 | 0.063 | 988 |
| Tarragona | Ilona | 27 | 0.062 | 1,149 |
Listed in 26 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 26 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
Ilona 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.