Stella
Latin for "star", and in Poland still a rare find: most people here have never met one. More girls got the name last year than in most years past, a quiet comeback that keeps it inside the top thousand.
Stella Pronunciation
Stella is pronounced STEL-lah (/ˈstɛlla/).
What Stella means
Where Stella comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Stella comes straight from Latin, where the word stella means star. No metaphor needs unpacking. The name for a point of light in the sky became a name for a person, and it kept that plain meaning as it moved between languages.
In English and Italian, Stella found a literary home. Sir Philip Sidney gave it to the beloved of his sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, printed in 1591, and English readers have linked the name with poetry since. Italian speakers hear stella every day as the ordinary word for star, so there the name sits close to common speech.
Polish keeps a slimmer variant, stela, spelled with a single l. A girl called Stella will hear her name read from a class register beside a Zofia and a Julia, an import that settled in without much fuss. The meaning holds wherever it lands. Stella is the star.
When Stella celebrates name day
Stella appears 3 times in the Polish name day calendar, 2 of them as a main name, the first on 14 July.
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 Stella
1 in 8641 women in Poland is named Stella. 2,609 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #621 among female names.
Stella's popularity over time
65 girls were given the name in 2025, ranking #310 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2002.
Where Stella is most popular
Stella is most popular in Lubusz, 68% above the national average (14 girls born 2019–2025), followed by Lower Silesian (+41%) and West Pomeranian (+34%). It is least common in Podlaskie and Lublin, 73% and 71% below average respectively.
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Lubusz14 girls born+68%
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Lower Silesian37 girls born+41%
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West Pomeranian19 girls born+34%
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Masovian78 girls born+31%
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Greater Poland47 girls born+30%
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Pomeranian30 girls born+22%
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Opole9 girls born+17%
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian18 girls born−2%
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Silesian35 girls born−8%
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Warmian-Masurian10 girls born−17%
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Łódź17 girls born−20%
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Świętokrzyskie7 girls born−25%
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Lesser Poland26 girls born−32%
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Subcarpathian7 girls born−65%
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Lublin5 girls born−71%
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Podlaskie3 girls born−73%
Stella as a middle name
Stella is a first name for 2,609 women in Poland and a middle name for another 861, a 75/25 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 261st, between Elisabeth (869) and Michelle (844).
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#259 Seweryna880
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#260 Elisabeth869
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#261 Stella861
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#262 Michelle844
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#263 Inez839