Nonna
From Greek, it carries a plain number: "ninth", a name once given to a ninth child. Fewer than 300 Polish women hold it today, and not one girl has received it this century. Most Poles will never meet a Nonna.
Nonna Pronunciation
Nonna is pronounced NON-nah (/ˈnɔnna/).
What Nonna means
Where Nonna comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Nonna comes from Greek, and the number nine sits behind it. Its plain meaning held on: ninth. In older ways of counting children, a ninth daughter or a child of a ninth month could be marked this way. Polish records attach no diminutives or variants to it, so it arrives whole, a single short form.
Saint Nonna gave the name its early weight. She was the mother of Gregory of Nazianzus, a fourth-century woman remembered in the Eastern church, and by that memory the name passed into Greek and then Slavic use.
Its firmest hold is Russian. Nonna Mordyukova, one of the most decorated Soviet actresses, was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1974, and for many the name shows her face before anything else. A Polish teacher reading it off a class register today would pause, since it stays rare here. The register still spells it out: Nonna, the ninth.
When Nonna celebrates name day
Nonna appears 1 time in the Polish name day calendar, never as a main name. The first of these dates is 5 August.
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 Nonna
1 in 83188 women in Poland is named Nonna. 271 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #1851 among female names.
Nonna as a middle name
Nonna is a first name for 271 women in Poland and a middle name for another 4, a 99/1 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 4319th, between Nonhlanhla (4) and Nsikan (4).
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#4317 Nona4
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#4318 Nonhlanhla4
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#4319 Nonna4
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#4320 Nsikan4
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#4321 Nura4