Diana
Meaning
divine
Goes by Dee, Di, Didi
Famously borne by Diana Ross. Immortalized by Diana Prince (Wonder Woman) in Wonder Woman (2017).
The story
Diana is often introduced as a moon goddess, but Roman worship gave her a much wider landscape. She watched over hunting, forests, wild animals, childbirth, and the moon, moving at the edges where settled life met the unknown. Her name comes from an ancient root meaning divine or goddesslike. Literature later brought Diana down from the heavens without making her smaller. In Walter Scott's Rob Roy, Diana Vernon is intelligent, brave, politically entangled, and far more capable than the young man narrating her story. In the twentieth century, Diana Spencer made the name inseparable from public glamour, private pressure, and unusually visible compassion. None of those women explains every Diana, and mythology is not a personality test. Together they show why the name has such reach: it can hold wilderness, wit, ceremony, and vulnerability without collapsing into one image. Diana sounds luminous, but its oldest strength is the freedom to move through several worlds.
Diana around the world
One shared root links 4 names across 3 languages.
Shared root: the Roman moon goddess, from an Italic root meaning "divine, heavenly"
The constellation
More branches
Diana in song
Diana
Paul Anka (1957)
Paul Anka was fifteen and hopelessly stuck on an older girl he knew from his church, which turned out to be a very good career move.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Diana peaked in the 1950s.
Popularity in Brazil
77,329 people · the #400 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 2,625 · median age 33
Among people named Diana living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1980s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 5,064 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Diana
People given the name Diana in the United States span the generations: the middle half were born anywhere from 1950 to 1999. Age is the one thing the name won't tell you.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Diana deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Diana truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Diana fits with your family’s names and surname.
Where Diana travels
Mexican American · a classic with royal and mythological associations, popular across generations
Vietnamese American · divine (a common refugee-generation English name)
Ukrainian · traditionally linked to the Roman goddess of the hunt and moon
Keep exploring
Nicknames for Diana · Ukrainian baby names · Vietnamese American baby names · Mexican American baby names
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