Philomena

girls:

9.7k births since 1880

#1619 (72nd percentile)

overall:

9.7k births since 1880

#2715 (65th percentile)

Popularity Trends

The name Philomena is the #2,715 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 9,736 recorded births since 1880. This represents the 64.9% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 64.9% of all names). For girls, it ranks #1,619 (71.7% percentile) for all time with 9,736 births since 1880.

Philomena has appeared in U.S. birth records since the beginning of our dataset in 1880 Birth data for Philomena is available in 143 out of the 144 years between 1880 and 2023. The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.

For girls, Philomena reached its peak popularity in 1922, achieving the 42.8% percentile (ranked #342) with 247 births per million. The name was most common in 1915, with 277 births per million (ranked 40.9% percentile). Since reaching a high point in 2020, the popularity of this name for girls has been declining. Currently, Philomena ranks #873 for girls (7.8% percentile) with 45 births per million, which is 16.3% of its peak share of births.

This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Philomena".

1880 2023 18802023

Key Statistics

Total Births
9,736
Peak Births
308
Peak Year
1922
First Recorded
1880
Peak Percentile
42.8%
Current Percentile
7.8%
Peak Rank
#342
Current Rank
#873
Female statistics

How to Pronounce Philomena

Our model has identified 5 different pronunciations for the name Philomena. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.

Our model is 45.5% confident that Philomena is pronounced as fih-luh-MEE-nuh, which has 4 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is FIH-luh-MEE-nuh, at 32.7% confidence, with 4 syllables.

fih-luh-MEE-nuh (4 syllables)
Verified
45.5% confidence
F IH0 L AH0 M IY1 N AH0
FIH-luh-MEE-nuh (4 syllables)
32.7% confidence
F IH1 L AH0 M IY1 N AH0
FIH-luh-mee-nuh (4 syllables)
10.9% confidence
F IH1 L AH0 M IY0 N AH0
FIH-luh-MEH-nuh (4 syllables)
5.5% confidence
F IH1 L AH0 M EH1 N AH0
fee-luh-MEE-nuh (4 syllables)
5.5% confidence
F IY0 L AH0 M IY1 N AH0

Possible Additional Pronunciations

If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Philomena? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Philomena. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Philomena, please vote using the thumbs up button.

About Pronunciation Data

Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.

For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.

The raw pronunciations shown (like F IH0 L AH0 M IY1 N AH0) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.

Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.

© 2025 NamePlay.org

Made with ❤️ by Aaron J Becker