Ophelia
Meaning
help
The story
Ophelia is Greek for help, and its record is one of the clearest cases of a literary shadow lifting that this site has measured. Shakespeare's drowned heroine kept the name beautiful and unbearable at once: real use a century ago, about 3,300 in the 1920s, then a seventy-year slide to 252 in all of the 1990s, a name families loved and would not touch. The turn is recent and steep: about 470, then 4,000 in the 2010s, and already 6,600 so far this decade, past the full 2010s with years to run, helped along, perhaps, by a folk-rock chorus that made the name radio-warm in 2016; decade buckets point, they do not convict. In our records: about 25,200 girls to 15 boys. The tragedy stayed in the play; the beauty finally walked out of it. Lilith's story one shelf over shows the same door opening.
Ophelia in song
Ophelia
The Band (1975)
Levon Helm chasing after a woman who vanished without a word, carried along by a horn arrangement that sounds like a parade going by.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Ophelia peaked in the 2020s.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
229 people · the #23,072 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 1,000,000 · median age 85
Among people named Ophelia living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1930s than in any other decade.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Ophelia deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Ophelia 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 Ophelia fits with your family’s names and surname.
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