Leona

Meaning and origin

Leona means “lion.” It is a feminine form of Leon, a name taken from the Greek word leon for the animal. Its ending gives the older masculine name a distinct feminine form while keeping the lion meaning clearly within the same family.

Leon’s history is closely connected with Leo, the Latin word and name meaning “lion.” During the Christian era, the Greek and Latin forms became intertwined across European naming traditions. Leona belongs to that wider group, with roots that reach beyond its familiar English spelling.

Pronunciation and related names

In English, Leona is usually pronounced lee-OH-nuh, with three syllables and the emphasis in the middle. It is also used in Czech, where the stress falls on the first syllable and the opening sounds closer to LEH-oh-nah.

Leone is a related English feminine form. French relatives include Léone, Léonne, and Léontine, while Leontina appears in several other language traditions. Leon and Leo provide the closest masculine connections, linking Leona with a large European family of lion names.

Leona Lewis

Singer Leona Lewis gives the name a contemporary musical association. Her album Spirit appeared in 2007, followed by Echo in 2009. Later releases include Glassheart in 2012 and I Am in 2015, showing the name across several stages of her recording career.

At the 2009 Grammy Awards, Lewis received three nominations. Bleeding Love was nominated for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, while Spirit was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album. Those nominations connect the name with both a widely recognized song and the album that helped establish her recording career.

Leona Woods Marshall Libby

Physicist Leona Woods, later known as Leona Woods Marshall Libby, provides a different historical connection. She was the youngest scientist and the only woman on the team that developed Chicago Pile-1, the world’s first nuclear reactor, at the University of Chicago in 1942.

Woods continued working on her doctoral dissertation during the project and received her doctorate in 1943. Her later career included work at Princeton, teaching at New York University and the University of Colorado, and helping create UCLA’s Department of Environmental Science and Engineering. Her work places Leona in the history of twentieth-century physics as well as music.

Popularity in the United States

Leona was especially familiar for American girls around the beginning of the twentieth century. Its best rank was number 69 in 1904, while its largest annual count came in 1918, when 3,335 girls received the name.

Recent records show renewed interest. Leona ranked number 682 in 2015, number 484 in 2020, and number 429 in 2025. It remains below its early historical peak, but its movement over that decade has been upward.

How popular is Leona?

In 2025, Leona ranked #429 among girls in the United States, with 723 recorded uses. The U.S. birth records first list this spelling for girls in 1880; its largest annual count was 3,335 in 1918. Rankings count each spelling separately. They describe national use, so local familiarity can differ. The popularity chart shows whether the name has remained common, returned after a quieter period, or risen recently.