Rusłana
A Ukrainian name meaning "lioness", from a Turkic word for lion. In Poland it stays rare: fewer than 100 women carry it, and no newborn girls have been recorded with it so far this century.
Rusłana Pronunciation
Rusłana is pronounced roos-WAH-nah (/rusˈwana/).
What Rusłana means
Where Rusłana comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Rusłana comes into Polish from the Slavic east, and it is the feminine of Rusłan. Both names trace back through Turkic "arslan," meaning lion. The Polish gloss makes the pairing exact: Rusłana is the lwica, the lioness.
The male form Rusłan owes much of its fame to Pushkin. His 1820 poem "Ruslan and Ludmila" gave the name a hero and sent it across the Slavic world. Rusłana followed as its Ukrainian companion.
One bearer fixed the name for a modern audience. The Ukrainian singer Ruslana won the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest with "Wild Dances." She sang for Ukraine and carried the lioness sense onto a stage watched across a continent.
On a Polish class register today, Rusłana stands out among the Zuzannas and Julias. The spelling puts a ł where Ukrainian writes a soft l. Read the name back and the meaning is plain: lion.
How many people are named Rusłana
1 in 253301 women in Poland is named Rusłana. 89 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3733 among female names.