Olena
Around 82,000 women in Poland carry it, but almost no newborns get it now: the name reads as heritage, carried over rather than freshly chosen. Ukrainian at root, it means "torch" or bright light.
Olena Pronunciation
Olena is pronounced o-LE-nah (/ɔˈlɛna/).
What Olena means
Where Olena comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Olena is the Ukrainian form of Helen, reshaped by Slavic mouths until it settled into its own sound. The name it grew from holds the sense of torch, of bright light, and that meaning travelled with it into Ukrainian without much fuss.
For a long time the name belonged mostly to Ukraine. Olena Pchilka, born in 1849, was a writer and publisher, and mother of the poet Lesya Ukrainka. More recently Olena Zelenska, wife of the president, made the name known far past the country's borders.
In a Polish class register, Olena now sits among the Zuzannas and Julias, a name that arrived with Ukrainian families and stayed. It has no Polish diminutive of its own, no tidy shortened form waiting on an official urząd document. People use it whole.
The old meaning holds: torch, bright light.
How many people are named Olena
1 in 274 women in Poland is named Olena. 82,437 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #136 among female names.
Olena's popularity over time
5 girls were given the name in 2025, ranking #951 among newborns. It is making a comeback after a low in 2003. Still the #136 name among living women, even as it slips to #951 among newborns.
Where Olena is most popular
Olena is most popular in Warmian-Masurian, 168% above the national average (4 girls born 2019–2025), followed by Greater Poland (+168%) and Lower Silesian (+144%). It is least common in Silesian and Lesser Poland, 58% and 37% below average respectively.
-
Warmian-Masurian4 girls born+168%
-
Greater Poland12 girls born+168%
-
Lower Silesian8 girls born+144%
-
Kuyavian-Pomeranian3 girls born+32%
-
Łódź3 girls born+14%
-
Masovian6 girls born−19%
-
Subcarpathian2 girls born−20%
-
Pomeranian2 girls born−35%
-
Lesser Poland3 girls born−37%
-
Silesian2 girls born−58%
Olena as a middle name
Olena is a first name for 82,437 women in Poland and a middle name for another 119, a 100/0 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 602nd, between Natasha (119) and Atena (118).
-
600
120Virginia
-
601
119Natasha
-
602119Olena
-
603
118Atena
-
604
118Felicyta