Yeliena
A Slavic name meaning "torch" or shining light, carried in Poland by just over sixty women. That makes it rare enough that most Poles have never met one.
Yeliena Pronunciation
Yeliena is pronounced ih-el-YE-nah (/ɨɛlˈjɛna/).
What Yeliena means
Where Yeliena comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Yeliena is the Russian, Slavic form of a name that means torch, shining light. In Polish it reads as jasna, świecąca. The spelling with the "ye" opening holds the sound of the Cyrillic Елена, the way the name crosses out of Russian into Latin letters.
The sense of light has followed this name for a long time. Elena and its Russian shape connect to the old Greek Helene, and that root is where the meaning of torch, shining light was first attached. So a girl named Yeliena carries a very old idea of brightness, even when the spelling looks fresh to Polish eyes.
In a Polish class register, Yeliena would stand apart from the Zofias and Julias. It signals a Russian family line, or parents drawn to the eastern spelling. The name has no common Polish diminutive of its own, so it tends to keep its full shape.
Yeliena means jasna, świecąca. Torch, shining light.
How many people are named Yeliena
1 in 369571 women in Poland is named Yeliena. 61 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #4734 among female names.