Mina
Meaning
short form of Wilhelmina (from Wilhelm: willo "will, desire" + helm "helmet, protection"); also used independently in other cultures
One Mina, three histories
Germanic · A short form of Wilhelmina and other names ending in mina.
Japanese · A Japanese feminine name written with many kanji combinations, including 美奈 and 美菜.
Korean · A Korean feminine name written 미나; its meaning depends on the chosen hanja or native formation.
The story
Mina was a Victorian favorite before it was a modern one: about 1,000 girls in our 1890s records, the same decade Bram Stoker gave the name to Mina Harker, the steady heart of Dracula. It thinned gently for most of a century, down to about 430 girls in the 1970s, then turned: about 1,200 in the 1990s, about 2,600 in the 2000s, about 3,800 in the 2010s, and about 2,900 so far this decade. And Mina belongs to more languages than most names its size: an English short form of Wilhelmina, will and helmet in the old elements; a Sanskrit name meaning fish, a sign of the zodiac in Hindu astrology; Persian for glaze and enamel; Pashto for love. Short, warm, and at home in many languages: the kind of name a century hands back.
The formal names behind Mina
Mina is an established short form of this name.
Wilhelmina · Germanic origin · Dutch and German feminine form of Wilhelm ("will helmet")
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Mina peaked in the 2000s and the 2020s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
434 people · the #14,753 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 500,000 · median age 34
Among people named Mina living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 2010s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 36 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Mina deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Mina 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 Mina fits with your family’s names and surname.
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