Irena
Around 200,000 Polish women carry it, and after quieter years it's climbing again: more newborn girls last year than in most of the 2000s. The name comes from the Greek for "peace".
Irena Pronunciation
Irena is pronounced ee-RE-nah (/iˈrɛna/).
What Irena means
Where Irena comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
The name comes from the Greek Eirene, which meant peace. In myth Eirene stood among the Horae as a goddess of peace, and the word made its way west through Latin before settling in Poland as Irena. The variant Irene keeps that older shape closer to the surface.
In Polish the sense stays plain, since pokój is the everyday word for the same thing. Irena softens into the diminutive Irenka. Shorter still is Irka, the form a friend reaches for when a full name feels too formal, or the one a teacher marks off on a school register.
One well-documented bearer stands out. Irena Sendler, born near Warsaw in 1910, worked as a social worker and helped smuggle Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto during the war. She died in 2008. The name she answered to means, in its plainest reading, peace.
When Irena celebrates name day
Irena appears 7 times in the Polish name day calendar, 5 of them as a main name, the first on 5 April.
The days Polish calendars list this name on. By custom you celebrate one of them, usually the first after your birthday.
Rarer dates. Only the most complete calendars add this name on these days. Most skip them, so hardly anyone celebrates then.
How many people are named Irena
1 in 111 women in Poland is named Irena. 202,876 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #64 among female names.
Irena's popularity over time
92 girls were given the name in 2025, ranking #255 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2002. Still the #64 name among living women, even as it slips to #255 among newborns.
Where Irena is most popular
Irena is most popular in Masovian, 80% above the national average (167 girls born 2019–2025), followed by Pomeranian (+35%) and Lesser Poland (+11%). It is least common in Świętokrzyskie and Opole, 86% and 83% below average respectively.
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Masovian167 girls born+80%
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Pomeranian52 girls born+35%
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Lesser Poland66 girls born+11%
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian31 girls born+8%
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Greater Poland61 girls born+8%
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Lower Silesian40 girls born−3%
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Lublin23 girls born−14%
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Podlaskie14 girls born−19%
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Łódź27 girls born−19%
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Silesian47 girls born−21%
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West Pomeranian13 girls born−41%
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Warmian-Masurian10 girls born−47%
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Lubusz4 girls born−69%
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Subcarpathian7 girls born−78%
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Opole2 girls born−83%
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Świętokrzyskie2 girls born−86%
Irena as a middle name
Irena is a first name for 202,876 women in Poland and a middle name for another 117,720, a 63/37 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 24th, between Weronika (118,474) and Jolanta (117,441).
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#22 Beata120,044
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#23 Weronika118,474
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#24 Irena117,720
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#25 Jolanta117,441
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#26 Aleksandra116,155