Liana

About Liana

Liana can be a short form of Juliana, Liliana, and other names ending in liana. It also shares its spelling with the word for a climbing vine, giving it a separate botanical association. Writer Liana Millu and cartoonist Liana Finck connect the name with two very different forms of illustrated and written storytelling.

Name family and sound

As a short form, Liana takes its history from the longer name behind it. Juliana and Liliana belong to different name families, so this route does not give every Liana one identical ancient meaning.

The botanical word liana refers to a type of vine growing in tropical forests. That association can stand alongside the personal-name tradition without requiring a connection with Juliana or Liliana.

English pronunciations include lee-AH-nuh and lee-AN-uh, with stress in the middle. Italian is more compact, approximately LYAH-nah, with stress at the beginning.

Liana is used in Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, English, and Georgian. Leanna is a related English form, while Juliana and Liliana preserve the longer names from which Liana can be shortened.

Liana Millu and testimony

Italian-Jewish journalist and schoolteacher Liana Millu joined the Italian partisans in 1943. She was arrested in 1944 and deported to Birkenau.

Her book Smoke over Birkenau tells the stories of women who lived and suffered alongside her. The work gives individual lives a place within the history of the camp rather than reducing that experience to an anonymous collective.

The English translation by Lynne Sharon Schwartz was published by Northwestern University Press. It received the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award, recognizing the translation rather than an award originally presented to Millu's Italian text.

Millu's first name appears on a work of Holocaust testimony centered on women's experiences. It gives Liana a literary connection concerned with memory, survival, and the preservation of other people's stories.

Liana Finck and drawing

Cartoonist Liana Finck published Passing for Human in 2018. The graphic memoir uses drawing and fable-like storytelling to explore family, creativity, and the feeling of being different.

Her 2019 collection Excuse Me: Cartoons, Complaints, and Notes to Self brought together more than five hundred cartoons from publications including The New Yorker and from her online work. Its topics include relationships, identity, and the absurdities of daily experience.

Finck's spare, scratchy drawing style gives her first name a recognizable place in contemporary cartooning. Her books combine pictures and words, offering a different kind of storytelling from Millu's prose testimony.

American popularity

Liana was given to 281 girls in the United States in 2000 and 554 in 2010. Its largest annual female count came in 2025, with 801 girls and a rank of 386th.

The spelling has therefore grown substantially since the beginning of the century. Its recent American record brings together a short-form name with several language traditions and a familiar botanical word.

How popular is Liana?

In 2025, Liana ranked #386 among girls in the United States, with 801 recorded uses. The U.S. birth records first list this spelling for girls in 1929; its largest annual count was 801 in 2025. 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.