Philomena
Philomena is a girl's name that peaked in 1922, when it was the 371st most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,911th. About 2,900 Philomenas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 29.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Philomena
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 9,951
- Estimated living today
- 2,900
- Median age today
- 29
- Peak year
- 1922
- Best rank
- 371st
- Rank in 2025
- 1,911th
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Philomenas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 9,951 babies given the name since 1880, about 2,900 are alive — 30 in every hundred. Roughly 1,200 of them are children and 1,100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1996 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
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Philomenas
- Philomena (291–304)Christian saint, martyr and wonderworker
People named Philomena with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Philomena is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Philomena is most concentrated in Connecticut (5.6×), Pennsylvania (5.3×), New Jersey (4.5×), New York (4.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1922
The most popular girls’ names the year Philomena peaked:
Philomena elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland girls | Philomena | 1,315 | 72nd |
| England and Wales girls | Philomena | 246 | 1,749th |
| Switzerland girls | Philomena | 109 | 700th |
| France girls | Philomena | 80 | 1,084th |
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.
Philomena: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Philomena | 106 | 0.009% | 509th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Philomena | 2 | 0.000% | 762nd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Philomena | 1 | 0.002% | 179th |
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, Philomena is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 25 of them.
Philomena by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 4 | 538th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Philomena 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 | Philomena | 1,266 | 4,616 |
| the Netherlands boys | Philomena | — | 547 |
| Finland girls | Philomena | — | 9 |
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.
Related names
Philomena 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.