100 Beautiful Greek Names for Girls and What They Mean

Adamantia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Unconquerable, unbreakable
• Pronunciation: ah-dha-man-DEE-ah

The root adamas gave English two words that could hardly sound more different: adamant, meaning immovable, and diamond, the hardest stone a jeweler can set. Ancient writers used it first of gold and sapphire, then of any material nothing could scratch, and finally of people who refused to be talked round.

That history is the whole appeal. Adamantia is long, formal and unmistakably Greek, and it gives a daughter a name that says strong, resolute, determined without ever using the word tough.

Afroditi

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Unknown
• Pronunciation: af-ro-DHEE-tee
• Variations: Aphrodite

No one has recovered what Aphrodite originally meant, and the modern Greek Afroditi inherits that blank. The old reading of it as born of sea foam is a story the Greeks told about the name, not a linguistic derivation, so the name arrives with its mystery intact.

The goddess is far better documented than her name. She governed beauty, love, passion and procreation, and the Spartans, who had their own priorities, honored her as a war goddess besides.

Myrtle, doves, roses and swans were all hers, and that sea-foam birth makes Afroditi a natural pick for a family that lives, works or spends its summers by the sea.

Aglaia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Splendor, beauty
• Pronunciation: ah-glah-EE-ah

Aglaia was one of the three Charites, better known in English as the Graces, who between them covered beauty, creativity, goodwill and the fertility of the natural world. She appears under other names in other authors, called Kale in some texts and Charis in others, which shows how loosely the trio was ever defined.

The name is pure description rather than a story. English speakers usually trip on the run of vowels at the end, so it helps to know the stress lands on the third syllable, not the first.

Aikaterini

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Debated
• Pronunciation: eh-ka-te-REE-nee
• Variations: Ekaterini

The meaning is genuinely contested, and any list that prints one flatly is overselling. Aikaterini is the Modern Greek form of Katherine, and the candidate roots pull in opposite directions: hekateros, each of the two, and aikia, torture.

Early Christian writers attached the name instead to katharos, meaning pure, and that reading stuck so hard that most baby-name books still print it as fact. It is an association the name acquired, not the etymology it started with.

For daily use it folds down neatly. Katerina, Katina and Kaiti all do the work of a nickname while the full form stays on the paperwork.

Aimilia

• Origin: Greek, from Latin
• Meaning: Rival
• Pronunciation: eh-mee-LEE-ah
• Variations: Emilia

Aimilia runs back through the Greek transcription to the Roman family name Aemilius, and behind that to Latin aemulus, rival. It is competitive in the older sense of the word: someone who matches you, not someone who has to beat you.

That makes it a close relative of Emilia without any of the shared popularity. The spelling looks forbidding, but the opening ai is just the Greek way of writing a short e, so it sounds far more familiar than it reads.

Alexandra

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Defender of man
• Pronunciation: ah-lek-SAHN-dhra
• Popularity: #237 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (1,314 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Falling in the United States, down 48% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

Alexandra carries one of the cleanest meanings in Greek onomastics, and it belonged to a goddess before it belonged to anyone else. It was a Mycenaean epithet of Hera, who is remembered mostly for her temper but who also stood between humanity and her husband’s worst impulses.

It has aged into a name that works equally well on a nursery door and a nameplate, which is rarer than it sounds. Its US rank of #237 in 2025 puts it in the sweet spot: familiar to every teacher, unlikely to be duplicated in the class.

Alexia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Defender, helper
• Pronunciation: ah-lek-SEE-ah
• Popularity: #1,040 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (239 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Falling in the United States, down 67% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

Alexia earns its place here on a technicality worth explaining. It is usually filed as a modern English name, but it is the feminine of the Greek Alexis, which puts its roots firmly in Greek soil.

The two traditions have drifted apart in use. In the United States it slipped to #884 in 2024, well down from its 2000s peak, while in Greece it stayed an ordinary, unremarkable choice.

One thing worth knowing before you commit: alexia is also the clinical term for acquired dyslexia, a reading impairment that follows a stroke or brain injury. It has never stopped Greek families using the name, but it is better learned now than from a search engine in ten years.

Aliki

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Noble type
• Pronunciation: ah-LEE-kee
• Variations: Alice

Aliki is the Greek form of Alice, but the spelling does double duty. It matches the Greek word transcribed alikos, meaning crimson, scarlet, deep red, so the name reads as a color to a Greek ear and as a classic to an English one.

That gives it a quiet advantage over Scarlett, which has been working hard in playgrounds for a decade. Aliki says the same thing in a language most people will not think to translate.

Amalia

• Origin: Germanic, used in Greek
• Meaning: Unceasing, vigorous, brave
• Pronunciation: ah-mah-LEE-ah
• Popularity: #566 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (530 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Rising in the United States, up 117% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

Amalia is the odd one out on this list: the sound is thoroughly Greek but the root is Germanic, a short form of the old names built on amal, meaning unceasing, vigorous, brave. It is regularly assumed to be a respelling of Emilia, and it is not; the two names have nothing in common but their rhythm.

In Greece it comes with a fixed date attached, since the name day for Amalia falls on July 10th.

American parents have started noticing it, and it sat at #566 in 2025, close enough to Emily and Amelia to feel wearable, far enough away to still be a choice rather than a default.

Anastasia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Resurrection
• Pronunciation: ah-nah-stah-SEE-ah
• Namesakes: Saint Anastasia of Sirmium, 4th-century martyr
• Popularity: #163 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (1,832 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Rising in the United States, up 79% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

Anastasia comes straight from anastasis, resurrection, which is why it turns up so often in Orthodox families with an Easter baby.

Anastasia of Sirmium was a fourth-century Christian who refused to convert to the pagan religion of Rome. She was imprisoned and starved, then put aboard a boat built to sink, and when neither killed her she was burned. The persistence in the story matches the persistence in the name.

It is the rare four-syllable name that has never needed rescuing: #163 in the US in 2025, with the Greek diminutives Tasia, Tasoula and Natasa all on hand for the years when four syllables is three too many.

Andriana

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Manly, brave
• Pronunciation: an-dhree-AH-nah

Andriana is the feminine of Andreas, from andreios, and it carries the same idea of courage that the masculine does. The soft ending takes the edge off a blunt root, which is much of its charm.

It has a second life a long way from Greece. Among the Malagasy people of Madagascar, Andriana was the title of the highest social class, placed in front of a name to mark noble rank. Two unrelated traditions arrived at the same handsome word, which is a good deal more interesting than a single etymology.

Andromachi

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Man battle
• Pronunciation: an-dhro-MAH-hee
• Variations: Andromache

The name is built from the Greek words for man and battle, and Greek compounds are famously loose about which way round the relationship runs. Fighter of men, man’s fighter, battle of men: all three are defensible readings and no one can settle it.

The Andromache of the Iliad was a Trojan princess and the wife of Hector, and her marriage was held up as the Greek ideal of a good one. She is remembered for fidelity and for endurance rather than for fighting anyone: Troy fell, her son Astyanax was killed, and she was taken as a captive by Achilles’ son. She is a different figure from the Amazon warrior of the same name.

Androniki

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Victory of a man
• Pronunciation: an-dhro-NEE-kee

Androniki is the feminine of Andronikos, joining the roots for man and victory. It is one of the genuinely rare names on this list, well outside the published rankings in every country that publishes them, including Greece.

If the goal is a name no one in the room will share, this is the end of the search. The trade is the usual one: expect to spell it, and expect Niki to do most of the work until she is old enough to want the full four syllables.

Angeliki

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Messenger, angelic
• Pronunciation: ang-ge-lee-KEE
• Variations: Angelica

The root angelos simply meant messenger, envoy, one who announces. It was an ordinary job description before it was anything else.

Christian writers borrowed it for the spiritual beings who carried God’s messages to humanity, and the ordinary word narrowed into the specific one we now translate as angel. Angeliki sits on the older, broader sense as much as the later one.

In Greece it is thoroughly mainstream and usually shortened to Kiki or Angela, which gives the name a range most four-syllable choices do not have.

Anthe

• Origin: Ancient Greek
• Meaning: Bloom, blossom, flower
• Pronunciation: an-THEE
• Variations: Anthi

Anthe belongs to the large Greek family of names built on anthos, and it is the shortest of them: two syllables, one idea, bloom, blossom, flower.

The myth attached to it is bleaker than the meaning. Anthe was one of seven daughters of the giant Alcyoneus, and when Hercules killed their father the sisters threw themselves into the sea and were changed into kingfishers.

Read either way, it pairs beautifully with the other blossom names further down this list, which is worth remembering if a second daughter is a possibility.

Anthoula

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Little flower
• Pronunciation: an-THOO-lah
• Namesakes: Anthoula Katsimatides, September 11th victims’ advocate

The -oula ending is Greek for affection, the same suffix that turns Stavros into Stavroula and Zacharias into Zacharoula. On anthos it produces something close to little flower, a nickname that grew up and became a name in its own right.

Anthoula Katsimatides lost her brother in the September 11th attacks and spent the years that followed advocating for the victims’ families.

It is a soft name with a serious bearer, which is a useful combination.

Antigoni

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Uncertain
• Pronunciation: an-dee-GO-nee
• Variations: Antigone

Antigoni is one of those names where the honest answer is that scholars disagree. The first element, anti, is elastic in Greek: against, like, compared to, in place of.

Pair it with goneus, ancestor, and you get something warm, along the lines of like one’s parents. Pair it instead with gone, offspring or birth, and you get against motherhood or in place of a mother, which is a very different name.

Sophocles gave the name its weight regardless. His Antigone defies King Creon’s edict to bury her brother Polynices, holding that divine law outranks a king’s, and is sentenced to be walled up alive for it. Twenty-four centuries later she is still the reference point for principled disobedience.

Antonia

• Origin: Latin, used in Greek
• Meaning: Unknown
• Pronunciation: an-do-NEE-ah

Antonia is the feminine of the Roman family name Antonius, whose own meaning was already lost by the classical period. Anyone who tells you it means priceless is repeating a Renaissance guess.

The name exists at all because of Roman naming practice. Women were not given personal names, so a daughter of the Antonius family was simply Antonia, and a second daughter was distinguished by a nickname such as Tertia, meaning third.

What began as an administrative shortcut is now one of the most elegant names on this list, which is a fair trade.

Apostolia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Messenger, apostle
• Pronunciation: ah-po-sto-LEE-ah

Apostolia is the feminine of Apostolos, from apo, from, and stello, to send. The literal sense is one who is sent out, which predates any religious use of the word.

It is rare almost everywhere, including Greece, and effectively unheard of in the English-speaking world. That cuts both ways: she will never share it with a classmate, and she will also never find it printed on a keyring in a gift shop.

Areti

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Virtue, excellence
• Pronunciation: ah-re-TEE
• Variations: Arete

Arete is one of the load-bearing words of Greek philosophy, and it does not translate cleanly. Virtue is the standard rendering, but the Greek sense is closer to being excellent at the thing you exist to do: a sharp knife has arete, and so does a person living up to their capacity.

The Greeks tied it to knowledge, and held that contemplation, the knowledge of knowledge, was the road to the highest kind of happiness. That is a great deal of philosophy packed into three syllables.

As a name it is short, clean and stressed on the last syllable, which keeps it from sounding like the English word.

Argiro

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Silver
• Pronunciation: ar-yee-RO
• Variations: Argyro
• Namesakes: Argiro Barbarigou, Greek chef and cookbook author

Argiro is the feminine of Argyros, silver, and the stress on the final syllable gives it a snap that most Greek names of this length do not have.

Its best-known bearer is Argiro Barbarigou, one of the most recognizable chefs and cookbook authors in Greece, known for cooking and writing about traditional Greek home food.

Aristea

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Best, excellent
• Pronunciation: ah-ree-STEH-ah

Aristea comes from aristos, best, the same root behind aristocracy, government by the best, and behind the masculine Aristeas, borne by a Greek poet of the seventh century BC.

Botanists borrowed the word for a genus of evergreen perennials native to southern and tropical Africa, sold under names like blue-eyed iris. Gardeners in Australia and New Zealand know it less fondly, since Aristea ecklonii escaped cultivation and landed on the banned species lists there.

The name itself has no such baggage. It is soft in the mouth, obviously Greek, and makes a claim about a child that most flower names do not.

Asimina

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Silver
• Pronunciation: ah-see-MEE-nah

Asimina and Argiro mean the same thing by different routes, which is a small gift if you are naming twins.

It is also the botanical name for the pawpaw genus. Asimina triloba carries the second largest edible fruit native to the United States, beaten only by squash, and it tastes like custard crossed with banana, mango and cantaloupe. Almost no one has eaten one, because the fruit keeps two or three days at room temperature and bruises if you look at it wrong.

So the name works twice over: a precious-metal meaning for parents who want one, and a genuinely unusual nature-based girl’s name for parents who want that instead.

Aspasia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Welcome, embrace
• Pronunciation: ahs-pah-SEE-ah
• Namesakes: Aspasia of Miletus, partner of Pericles

Aspasia of Miletus was the partner of Pericles at the height of Athenian power, and one of the best-attested women of the ancient world, which is not the same as being well documented. Four fourth-century philosophers wrote her into Socratic dialogues, and Plato, Xenophon and Aeschines all present her as an educated rhetorician whose advice was worth having.

Pronunciation is the one hurdle. English speakers reach for as-PAY-zhee-ah; the Greek is ahs-pah-SEE-ah, with the weight on the third syllable. Neither is wrong in its own language, but it is worth deciding which one your family will use before the first day of school.

A genus of Central and South American orchids carries the name too, some of them growing along the stems of other plants and living on rain, air and whatever debris collects around them.

Athanasia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Immortal
• Pronunciation: ah-thah-nah-SEE-ah

Athanasia is the feminine of Athanasios, built from the negative a- and thanatos, death. Not-death is a bold thing to name a child, and Greek has never been shy about it.

Oscar Wilde wrote a poem called Athanasia that turns on exactly that idea, and the name and the poem are working on the same thought.

In practice she will be Sia, which is about as far from a four-syllable classical name as a nickname can travel, and one of the reasons this pretty name is more wearable than it looks.

Athina

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Uncertain, linked to the city of Athens
• Pronunciation: ah-thee-NAH
• Variations: Athena
• Popularity: #5,426 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (23 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Steady in the United States, up 10% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

Athina is the modern Greek spelling of the ancient Greek name Athena, goddess of wisdom, craft and strategic war, and patron of the city that shares her name.

Which came first is the oldest question about this name and it is still open. Ancient Greeks argued over whether the city was named for the goddess or the goddess for the city, and modern scholars have not settled it either, which is why the honest entry for meaning is uncertain rather than a tidy translation.

The English spelling Athena has been climbing steadily and reached #109 in the US in 2025. Athina is the same name with the Greek stress restored, landing on the final syllable, and it is a quieter way into a very popular sound.

Charicleia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Glory of grace
• Pronunciation: hah-REE-klee-ah
• Variations: Charikleia, Chariklia

Two elements do the work here: charis, grace or kindness, and kleos, glory. It is a compliment paid twice.

The name belongs to the heroine of the Aethiopica, a third-century novel about an Ethiopian princess born with pale skin, whose mother places her with another household rather than face an accusation of adultery. Charicleia meets Theagenes, they fall in love, they run, and a long sequence of dangers follows before the ending sorts them out.

That book is one of the ancestors of the adventure novel, so the name comes with a genuinely old claim on the genre.

Chrysanthi

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Golden flower
• Pronunciation: hree-SAHN-thee

Chrysanthi is the feminine of Chrysanthos, from chrysos, gold, and anthos, flower. English took the same two roots and built chrysanthemum out of them, which is why the name looks familiar to people who have never seen it before.

Its name day sits on March 19th, the feast of Saint Chrysanthos, since the feminine traditionally shares the masculine saint’s date. Some women have started marking October 25th instead, for Saint Agia Chrysanthi, so a family can reasonably pick either.

Chrysoula is the diminutive it usually answers to, which is one of the prettier short forms in Greek.

Despoina

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Mistress, lady
• Pronunciation: DHES-pee-nah
• Variations: Despina

Despoina was a title before it was a name, the female counterpart to despotes, and it still carries that note of a woman with authority over a household.

In the Arcadian mystery cults she was a goddess whose real name was withheld from everyone but initiates, and Despoina, the Mistress, was the substitute the uninitiated were allowed to use. A name that exists specifically to stand in for a secret one is a rare find in a baby-name list.

It is ordinary enough in Greece to raise no eyebrows there and genuinely unusual anywhere else, which is a good position for a name to occupy.

Dimitra

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Earth mother
• Pronunciation: DHEE-mee-trah
• Variations: Demetra, Demeter

Dimitra is the modern form of Demeter, goddess of grain, harvest and the cycle of the growing year. She is also the mother in the Persephone story further down this list, so Dimitra and Persefoni make a mother-daughter pair with a few thousand years behind it.

Unlike most mythological names, this one never went away in Greece, where it is a standard choice rather than a revival, and it shortens to Dimi.

The stress is the thing English speakers get wrong. It falls on the first syllable, DHEE-mee-trah, not in the middle.

Dionysia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Of Zeus and Nysa
• Pronunciation: dhee-o-nee-SEE-ah

The name is the feminine of Dionysius, which joins Zeus to Nysa, the mountain where the infant Dionysus was said to have been raised.

The Dionysia were the Athenian festivals held in his honor, and they are a large part of why Western theater exists. At the City Dionysia, three full days went to tragedy, with three playwrights each staging three tragedies and a satyr play, and comedy was admitted to the programme from 487 BC. The Rural Dionysia fell in midwinter and the City Dionysia in spring, so the name suits a child born at either turn of the year.

It is a large, formal name that settles comfortably into Nysa when four syllables is too many.

Effrosyni

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Merriment, good cheer
• Pronunciation: ef-fro-SEE-nee
• Variations: Euphrosyne

Euphrosyne was one of the three Graces, the one who stood for mirth, and Effrosyni is her name brought forward into modern spelling.

In Greece it is a familiar, well-used name that almost never travels, and its nickname is why it stays lovable at any age: Froso. Five syllables on the certificate, two at the dinner table.

Efstathia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Well built, stable
• Pronunciation: ef-stah-THEE-ah
• Variations: Eustathia

The chain of descent is long and unusually clear. Efstathia is the modern form of the Late Greek Eustathia, which is the feminine of Eustathios, from eu, good, and histemi, to set up or stand. Well built, steady, not easily knocked over.

That is a quietly ambitious thing to wish on a daughter, and it sidesteps the beauty-and-blossom register that most of this list occupies.

Efthalia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Bloom, flower
• Pronunciation: ef-thah-LEE-ah
• Variations: Euthalia

Efthalia is the modern spelling of Euthalia, built on eu, good, and the root behind thallo, to blossom, so it is a close cousin of Thalia further down this list.

Saint Euthalia lived in third-century Italy. Her mother Eutropia was healed and both of them converted to Christianity, which enraged Euthalia’s brother; he threatened them, their mother fled the house, and Euthalia stayed and was killed by him for refusing to recant.

It is one of the flower names with a spine, which is a combination worth having.

Efthymia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: In good spirits, cheerful
• Pronunciation: ef-thee-MEE-ah
• Variations: Euthymia, Efthimia

From eu, good, and the root for spirit, this is the Greek word for an even, contented frame of mind rather than a passing good mood.

There is a village in central Greece called Agia Efthymia that took its name from a person rather than the other way round. It was Myonia until an earthquake in 1580 drove the residents into the mountains, where an old man promised to protect them if they went back. They rebuilt and named the town after him, Saint Euthymius, in its feminine form.

Eirini

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Peace
• Pronunciation: ee-REE-nee
• Variations: Irini, Irene

Eirini is the modern Greek form of Eirene, and it straightforwardly means peace.

Eirene was the personification of peace in Athens, usually shown as a young woman holding the infant Plutus, god of wealth. The image is an argument as much as a statue: prosperity is a child that peace has to carry.

It is one of the most-used names in modern Greece, and it is a rare case where the Greek spelling is easier for English speakers than it looks, since the ei- is simply an ee sound.

Eleftheria

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Freedom
• Pronunciation: e-lef-the-REE-ah

Few names carry this much national weight. Eleftheria i thanatos, freedom or death, is the motto of Greece, adopted in 1814 by Filiki Eteria, the underground society formed to end Ottoman rule.

The Greek flag is said to spell it out: five blue stripes for the five syllables of Eleftheria, four white for the four of i thanatos. Whether the designers intended it or later Greeks decided it, the story is now part of the name.

So this is a heavier choice than most on the list, and a very direct one.

Eleni

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Uncertain
• Pronunciation: e-LE-nee
• Variations: Helen

Eleni is the modern Greek form of Helen, and the meaning has never been pinned down. The usual guesses run through helene, torch, and a root connected to light, but none is secure, and the name is probably older than the language that would explain it.

It is one of the most common names in Greece and one of the most graceful anywhere, three syllables that never feel long.

The pronunciation is the one warning. English speakers try eh-LAY-nee, EL-in-eye and half a dozen other things; the Greek is e-LE-nee, stress in the middle, every vowel short. Decide early which version your family will answer to, because both will be offered.

Elisavet

• Origin: Greek, from Hebrew
• Meaning: My God is an oath
• Pronunciation: e-lee-SAH-vet
• Variations: Elizabeth, Elisheva

Elisavet is the Modern Greek form of the Hebrew girl name Elisheva, better known in English as Elizabeth. The v is not a corruption; the Greek letter that once sounded like b shifted to a v long ago, and Elisavet just records how the name is actually said.

It solves a particular family problem neatly. If a daughter is expected to honor an Elizabeth, an Isabelle, a Beth or a Betty, Elisavet keeps the promise while giving the child something none of the cousins have.

Liza works as a short form in Greek and needs no explanation in English.

Elpida

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Hope
• Pronunciation: el-PEE-dha
• Variations: Elpis

Elpida is the modern form of Elpis and means hope with no interpretation required.

Elpis is the one thing left in Pandora’s jar after every evil had escaped into the world, and classicists have argued for centuries about what that actually means. If hope stayed behind with the evils, is it a comfort or the subtlest of them? The name inherits a genuinely good question.

Practically, it is a more distinctive route to the same idea than Hope, and its El- opening sets it alongside a decade of popular names without duplicating any of them.

Evangelia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Bringing good news
• Pronunciation: ev-ang-ge-LEE-ah

The root is euangelion, good news, the same word English turned into gospel by translating it literally. Evangelia is the feminine of Evangelos and one of the most-used names in Greece.

Its short form, Evi, is so common that plenty of Greek women go a lifetime being called it. Worth knowing if the full five syllables are the part you love.

Evanthia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Blooming richly
• Pronunciation: ev-an-THEE-ah
• Namesakes: Evanthia Kairi, first modern Greek woman to publish a play

Another of the blossom names, this one built on eu and anthos, so the sense is fine flowering rather than simply flower.

Evanthia Kairi earned it. A writer, translator and early feminist of the Greek independence generation, she is remembered as the first Greek woman of the modern era to have a play published.

Evdokia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Good will, good judgment
• Pronunciation: ev-dho-KEE-ah
• Variations: Eudocia

From eu, good, and dokeo, to think or seem, landing somewhere between good judgment and good will.

Modern Greeks are as likely to think of the film. Evdokia, released in 1971, was voted the best Greek movie ever made by the Greek Film Critics Association, which is not a thing many names have attached to them.

Evi covers it in everyday use.

Evmorfia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Beautiful, good form
• Pronunciation: ev-mor-FEE-ah

Evmorfia joins eu to morphe, shape or form, so the compliment is about proportion rather than prettiness. English took the same second root for morphology and metamorphosis.

Evmorfia Bethanis was born in Canada, raised in Athens, and went to London to study at Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design. After working with Alexander McQueen she launched her own fashion label under the name, which is about as literal a use of good form as a label can manage.

Fani

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Appearing
• Pronunciation: fah-NEE

Fani is a short form rather than a name in its own right, and its meaning only makes sense traced through its parent.

It comes from Theofania, which comes from Theophania, the feminine of Theophanes: theos, God, plus phanes, appearing, giving manifestation of God. Strip off the God and appearing is what remains, which is why the meaning above is the modest one rather than the full sense.

It can also come from Stefania, an unrelated root, so a Greek Fani may be a crown rather than an epiphany. Ask before you assume.

Foteini

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Light, bright
• Pronunciation: fo-tee-NEE
• Variations: Fotini, Photine

The root is phos, which means light and which English kept in photograph, photon and phosphorus. Foteini is the modern spelling of Photine, and the ph has softened to an f the way it does in nearly every Greek name that crosses into modern use.

Fotini Gazi has made the name recognizable in food circles, running a Greek cooking blog and its social channels alongside the restaurant at her family’s beach-side hotel on Lefkada.

Freideriki

• Origin: Germanic, used in Greek
• Meaning: Peaceful ruler
• Pronunciation: free-dhe-REE-kee
• Variations: Frideriki, Friederike

This is a German name wearing Greek clothes. Freideriki is the Greek form of Friederike, built from the elements meaning peace and ruler.

Almost every Freideriki in the world was born in Greece, and there are not many of them anywhere. If what you want is a Greek sound attached to a meaning about governing rather than blooming, this is the entry on the list that does it.

Garifallia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Carnation
• Pronunciation: gah-ree-fah-LYAH
• Variations: Garyfallia

Plenty of name lists give this one as chrysanthemum. It is not: the Greek garyfallo is the carnation, and Garifallia is that flower’s name used as a girl’s.

Its most famous bearer had a short and extraordinary life. Garifallia Mohalbi came from an important Greek family and was orphaned and enslaved after her parents were killed by invading Turkish forces. Brought to Boston by her rescuer’s family, she became a symbol for American abolitionists and early feminists, and died of tuberculosis at thirteen. Hiram Powers’ sculpture The Greek Slave grew out of her story.

That is a great deal of history for a flower name to carry, and it is why the name is still recognized in Greece.

Giannoula

• Origin: Greek, from Hebrew
• Meaning: Yahweh is gracious
• Pronunciation: yah-NOO-lah

Giannoula began as an affectionate form of Gianna, which comes from Ioanna, the Greek feminine of Ioannes, which is the Greek form of John. Four steps back to a Hebrew phrase meaning Yahweh is gracious.

The -oula ending did what Greek diminutives usually do and hardened into a full name. Unlike Gianna, which travelled and became an Italian girl name and then an American one, Giannoula stayed home, and it is still overwhelmingly a name you meet in Greece.

The opening gi is a soft y sound, not a hard g. That is the single most useful thing to know before you use it.

Glykeria

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Sweet
• Pronunciation: glee-ke-REE-ah

From glykys, sweet, the root behind glucose and glycerine. Saint Glykeria was a second-century martyr from Heraclea, and her feast on May 13th is the name day.

That date carries more weight in Greece than a birthday does. Every day in the Orthodox calendar belongs to at least one saint, so a name day is a fixed annual event, and because so many Greek children are named after a grandparent the household often celebrates two people at once.

Ifigeneia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Strong at birth
• Pronunciation: ee-fee-YE-nee-ah
• Variations: Iphigenia

Ifigeneia is the modern spelling of Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and her story is one of the hardest in Greek myth. Her father kills a stag sacred to Artemis on the way to Troy, and the goddess demands his daughter in exchange for the wind his fleet needs.

What happens next depends on which author you read, and that is the interesting part. In Aeschylus she dies on the altar, and her death is what drives Clytemnestra’s revenge. In Euripides, Artemis snatches her away at the last moment and leaves a stag in her place, and Iphigenia becomes a priestess in Tauris, where her brother Orestes eventually finds her.

It is a beautiful name with a difficult shadow, and worth knowing in full before you use it.

Ioulia

• Origin: Greek, from Latin
• Meaning: Downy-bearded
• Pronunciation: ee-oo-LEE-ah
• Variations: Julia, Yulia

Ioulia is the Greek form of Julia, and the meaning is the one nobody expects. The Roman family name Julius was traditionally derived from a word for the first soft beard of adolescence, which is a strange origin for one of the most feminine names in Europe.

The Greek spelling restores the initial vowel that Latin dropped, so the name opens with a soft ee- sound rather than a J. Say it once and the connection to Julia is obvious; read it cold and it is not obvious at all.

Kalliope

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Beautiful voice
• Pronunciation: kah-lee-O-pee
• Variations: Kalliopi, Calliope
• Popularity: #1,787 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (113 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Rising in the United States, up 234% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

From kallos, beauty, and ops, voice. Kalliope, also spelled Calliope, was the Muse of epic poetry and eloquence, described in the old accounts as the wisest and the most assertive of the nine, and Homer opens both his epics by asking a Muse for help.

American parents have found it: Calliope reached #451 in 2025, carried partly by television. The Greek spelling with a K is the older one and stays much rarer.

Popi is the standard Greek short form, which almost nobody guesses.

Kleopatra

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Glory of the father
• Pronunciation: kle-o-PAH-trah
• Variations: Cleopatra

Two misconceptions travel with this name, and both are worth clearing up. The K spelling is not a modern affectation: Kleopatra is the original, and Cleopatra is the Latinized version English inherited.

The famous one was not Egyptian either. Cleopatra VII was a Macedonian Greek, the last ruler of a dynasty founded by one of Alexander’s generals, and Koine Greek was her first language. The Ptolemies had refused to learn Egyptian for nearly three centuries, and she was the first of them who did.

Built from kleos, glory, and pater, father, the name was standard among Macedonian royal women long before she was born.

Konstantia

• Origin: Latin, used in Greek
• Meaning: Constant, steadfast
• Pronunciation: kon-stan-DEE-ah
• Variations: Konstantina, Constantia

Konstantia comes from the Late Latin name Constans, and the meaning is exactly what it looks like: someone who does not waver.

The name is common in Greece for a reason that has nothing to do with Rome. Constantine moved the capital of the empire to the city that took his name, and Greek Orthodox families have used the name and its feminine forms steadily ever since. Saints Constantine and Helen share a name day on May 21st, one of the busiest in the Greek calendar.

Konstantina is the fuller Greek form of the same name, so a family with a fixed idea about spelling has room to negotiate.

Kyriaki

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Of the Lord
• Pronunciation: kee-ree-ah-KEE
• Variations: Kyriake

Kyriaki is the feminine of Kyriakos, from kyrios, lord. It is also, without any change of spelling, the ordinary Greek word for Sunday, the Lord’s day.

That doubling has a practical result: Greek families often give the name to a daughter born on a Sunday, so the name quietly records the day she arrived.

It is almost exclusively feminine wherever it is used, with the odd exception in England, where a handful of boys carry it.

Lambrini

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Bright, brilliant
• Pronunciation: lam-bree-NEE
• Variations: Lamprini

Lambrini is the feminine of Lambros, from lampros, bright or radiant, and Lambros works as both a forename or a surname in Greece.

The same root gives Greek its word for Easter. Lambri, the brightness, is what many Greeks call the festival, which is the most important date in the Orthodox year, so a Lambrini born around Easter is named twice over.

It is one of the few names on this list whose meaning you can hear in the sound of it.

Lemonia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Lemon tree
• Pronunciation: le-mo-NYAH

Greek does the same thing with trees that English does with flowers, turning them into names for daughters. Lemonia is the lemon tree, and it sits alongside the olive, myrtle and rose names in the same tradition.

It has a second life in the kitchen. Lemonia are traditional Greek cookies made with lemon and baker’s ammonia, a leavener that smells so aggressive it only works in biscuits dry enough to drive the smell off in the oven. It is hard to find now outside Greek specialist shops and online.

The name is bright, unfussy, and about as far from a mythological weight as this list gets.

Loukia

• Origin: Greek, from Latin
• Meaning: Light
• Pronunciation: loo-KEE-ah
• Variations: Lucia, Lucy
• Namesakes: Loukia Nicolaidou, Cypriot modernist painter

Loukia is the Greek counterpart of Lucia, from the Latin lux, light. It is the sister name to Foteini further up this list, which reaches the same meaning through Greek rather than Latin.

Loukia Nicolaidou was a Cypriot modernist painter who left the island to train in Paris at a time when very few women from Cyprus did, and whose work was reappraised and sought after long after she made it.

Magdalini

• Origin: Greek, from Hebrew
• Meaning: From Magdala
• Pronunciation: magh-dhah-lee-NEE
• Variations: Magdalene, Magda

Magdalini is the Greek form of Magdalene, and the name is a place rather than a quality: Magdala was a fishing town on the Sea of Galilee, and Mary Magdalene was Mary from Magdala.

That makes it one of the few names on this list that describes where someone was from instead of what they were like. It is also a reminder that the Gospels reached Greek before they reached any other language, which is why so many biblical names on this list have a Greek shape.

Magda and Lina both come out of it easily.

Maria

• Origin: Greek, from Hebrew
• Meaning: Unknown
• Pronunciation: mah-REE-ah
• Variations: Mariam, Mary
• Popularity: #87 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (2,887 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Falling in the United States, down 19% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

Maria looks like the least Greek name on this list and is in fact one of the most Greek. It is the Latin form of the Greek Maria, which is interchangeable with the Greek Mariam, and both descend from the Hebrew Miryam, the name English renders as Mary.

The meaning was already lost before Greek got hold of it. Bitter, beloved, and drop of the sea have all been proposed, and none of them survives scrutiny.

It is the most common female name in Greece by a wide margin and still #87 in the United States in 2025, which makes it that unusual thing: a name that has never been fashionable and has never gone away.

Marika

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Diminutive of Maria
• Pronunciation: mah-REE-kah

Marika has no meaning of its own, and pretending otherwise would be inventing one. It is a diminutive of Maria and of the other names that start with Mari-, and people liked the sound enough to start using it on its own.

It gets around. Marika is a common surname among the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land in northern Australia, entirely unrelated to the Greek name.

One thing to check if your family speaks Spanish: a near-identical word is an offensive slur there. Spelled differently, pronounced the same, and better to know now than later.

Martha

• Origin: Aramaic, used in Greek
• Meaning: The lady, the mistress
• Pronunciation: MAR-thah
• Variations: Marta
• Popularity: #713 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (393 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Steady in the United States, down 1% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

Martha is Aramaic rather than Greek in origin, and it means the lady or the mistress of the house, which fits the gospel figure exactly: the sister of Lazarus, the one busy in the kitchen while her sister sits and listens.

The Greek Orthodox connection runs deeper than the story. The third Sunday of Pascha is the Sunday of the Myrrhbearers, honoring the women who cared for Jesus in life, carried oils to anoint his body, and were the first to find the tomb empty. Martha is among them, which is why the name is a steady Greek choice rather than an occasional one.

It sits at #712 in the United States in 2025, low enough now to feel like a deliberate choice rather than an inherited one.

Melpomeni

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: To celebrate with song
• Pronunciation: mel-po-ME-nee
• Variations: Melpomene

The nine Muses were the goddesses of the arts, and their job description shifted as the arts did.

Melpomene started out as the Muse of singing, which is what her name records, and was reassigned to tragedy once tragic drama became the prestige form. Some traditions kept her doing both. She is usually shown in the thick-soled boots ancient tragic actors wore, holding a tragic mask.

Melpomeni is the modern spelling, and it is one of the more musical names on this list even before you know what it means.

Natalia

• Origin: Latin, used in Greek
• Meaning: Christmas Day
• Pronunciation: nah-tah-LEE-ah
• Variations: Natalie, Natasa
• Popularity: #144 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (2,028 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Steady in the United States, up 1% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

Natalia comes from the Latin natale domini, the birthday of the Lord, so it was originally a name for a girl born at Christmas.

Greek Orthodox families use it for Saint Natalia, commemorated on August 26th. She was a wealthy Roman convert whose husband was executed for his faith; she prayed not to be forced into marriage with a pagan afterwards, and died in her sleep before anyone could arrange one.

In the United States it peaked at #79 in 2021 and has eased back to #144 in 2025, which usually signals a name settling into the long, useful middle of the list rather than falling out of use.

Nektaria

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Nectar, drink of the gods
• Pronunciation: nek-tah-REE-ah
• Namesakes: Nektaria Karantzi, Byzantine chant singer

Nectar was not a flower drink to the Greeks; it was what the gods drank to stay immortal. Botanists borrowed the word much later for the sugar in flowers, which is the only sense most people now know.

Nektaria Karantzi is one of the leading contemporary voices in Byzantine chant, a tradition where women’s voices were historically rare. It is a fitting association for a name this vowel-heavy, which is to say a name built to be sung.

Nikoleta

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Victory of the people
• Pronunciation: nee-ko-LE-tah
• Variations: Nikoletta, Nicolette

Nikoleta traces back through Nicolette to the Greek boy name Nikolaos, from nike, victory, and laos, people. Both spellings, with one t and with two, are in common use in Greece.

It is the rare Greek name that needs no translation for English speakers, since Nicolette has been familiar in English since the Middle Ages, and yet it still reads as Greek on the page. Niki does the everyday work.

Olympia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: From Olympus
• Pronunciation: o-leem-PEE-ah

Olympia is the feminine of Olympos, and the geography is worth getting straight because almost everyone gets it wrong.

Mount Olympus, in the north, is the home of the gods and the highest mountain in Greece. Archaia Olympia is a different place entirely, a sanctuary in the Alfeios valley in the western Peloponnese, and it is where the ancient Olympic Games were held. The name points at both, but the games came from the second one.

Alexander the Great’s mother was an Olympias, which gives the name a formidable pedigree, and it wears well at any age.

Ourania

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Heavenly
• Pronunciation: oo-rah-NEE-ah
• Variations: Urania

From ouranios, heavenly, and behind it Ouranos, the sky itself, which is where the planet Uranus gets its name.

Ourania, Latinized as Urania, was one of the nine Muses. They began as general goddesses of song and dance, and only later were handed individual departments; Ourania got astronomy, and is usually shown with a globe and a pair of compasses.

That makes it a natural choice for a family with an astronomer in it, or for parents who simply want a sky name that is not Luna, Nova or Stella.

Pagona

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Peacock
• Pronunciation: pah-GO-nah

This one is regularly mistranslated as ice, because pagos is the Greek for frost and the two words sit close together. The name actually comes from pagoni, the peacock, which is a considerably better thing to be called.

The peacock was the bird of Hera, whose hundred-eyed servant Argus was set into its tail after his death, so the bird has been a Greek symbol of watchfulness and splendour for a long time.

It is one of the rarest names here, barely used outside Greece and expat Greek families, and it has the unusual distinction of sounding soft while meaning something spectacular.

Panagiota

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: All-holy
• Pronunciation: pah-nah-YO-tah
• Variations: Panayiota

Panagiota is the feminine of Panagiotis, and both come from Panagia, the title meaning all-holy that the Orthodox Church gives the Virgin Mary.

That title explains something visitors to Greece always notice. Orthodox churches dedicated to Mary are not called Saint Mary’s, because the Church holds her to be beyond the rank of saint; they are simply called Panagia. The name carries the same idea.

Its short form is Giota, and the gi is a y sound, so it comes out as YO-tah.

Paraskevi

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Friday, preparation
• Pronunciation: pah-ra-ske-VEE

Paraskevi is the Greek word for Friday, and the literal sense is preparation: Friday was the day you got ready for the Sabbath. Like Kyriaki, it is a weekday that became a girl’s name.

Saint Paraskevi of Rome was arrested and tortured under the emperor Pius, then released after she cured his blindness. She was later beheaded for refusing to worship pagan idols, and hers is one of the busier name days in the Greek summer.

Voula and Evi are both standard short forms, which is useful for a name that runs to four syllables.

Parthena

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Maiden
• Pronunciation: par-THE-nah

Parthena comes straight from parthenos, maiden, and not, despite a mix-up that turns up on most name lists, from the Siren Parthenope. The same root names the Parthenon, the temple of Athena the maiden on the Acropolis.

Parthenope is a genuinely different name, built from the same first element plus ops, voice, and she is the Siren who threw herself into the sea after Odysseus sailed past unmoved. Worth separating the two if the myth is part of the appeal.

Parthena itself is plain, old and strong, and it is one of the very few names here that has never been fashionable anywhere.

Pelagia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Of the sea
• Pronunciation: pe-lah-YEE-ah
• Variations: Pelageya

From pelagos, the open sea, the same root behind the word archipelago and behind pelagic, the term marine biologists use for creatures that live in open water rather than near the shore.

Unlike most names on this list, Pelagia genuinely travelled. Saints of the name were venerated across the early Christian world, which carried it into Slavic, Romanian and Spanish-speaking countries, so it turns up in places with no Greek community at all.

It is a sea name that sounds nothing like the sea names English speakers usually reach for, which is most of its appeal.

Persephone

• Origin: Ancient Greek
• Meaning: Uncertain
• Pronunciation: per-se-FO-nee
• Variations: Persefoni
• Popularity: #735 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (372 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Rising in the United States, up 189% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

The meaning is genuinely unknown, and the honest reason is interesting: the name looks pre-Greek, older than the language that recorded it, so there is no Greek word underneath to translate. The ancient attempts to read it through pertho, to destroy, and phone, murder, are guesses the Greeks themselves were making about a word they had inherited.

The myth is the reason parents want it. Carried off by Hades, she eats a handful of pomegranate seeds in the underworld and is bound to return there for part of every year, which is the story the Greeks told to explain winter. Her mother Dimitra appears earlier in this list.

It sat at #734 in the US in 2025, so it is arriving rather than common. Four syllables of myth is a lot for a toddler, and Persy handles the years before she grows into it.

Pinelopi

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Uncertain
• Pronunciation: pee-ne-LO-pee
• Variations: Penelope
• Popularity: Penelope ranked #22 among US girls in 2025

The meaning of Penelope, and so of Pinelopi, has never been settled. The favorite explanation sends it through penelops, said to be a kind of duck, but there is no firm evidence for the connection and no certainty that a penelops was a duck at all. A second attempt joins pene, thread, to ops, eye, and it is equally unsupported.

The character is doing the work regardless. Penelope holds Ithaca together for twenty years by unpicking every night the shroud she weaves each day, which is the cleverest delaying tactic in ancient literature.

Penelope is now a genuine hit in English, #22 in the United States in 2025. Pinelopi is the Greek original of a name most American parents think of as English, and it is nowhere near as common.

Polyxeni

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Very hospitable
• Pronunciation: po-lee-KSE-nee
• Variations: Polyxena

Built from polys, many, and xenos, guest or stranger, so the sense is someone who entertains many guests. It is a close relative of Xenia at the end of this list, and both rest on the Greek idea that hospitality was a sacred duty rather than a courtesy.

Polyxena in the myths is the youngest daughter of Priam and Hecuba, caught up in the fall of Troy.

The modern association is friendlier. The 2017 Greek film Polyxeni follows an orphan adopted by a wealthy couple in Istanbul, and Katia Goulioni won the Hellenic Film Academy Award for Best Actress in 2018 for playing her.

Selene

• Origin: Ancient Greek
• Meaning: Moon
• Pronunciation: se-LEE-nee
• Variations: Selini, Selena
• Popularity: #623 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (469 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Rising in the United States, up 88% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

Selene is simply the Greek word for the moon, and the goddess and the object were never really separated in Greek thought.

She came from a family of lights. The Titans were the children of earth and sky, and Hyperion’s three children were Selene the moon, Helios the sun and Eos the dawn. Selene drove her chariot across the night sky behind her brother’s.

Her Roman counterpart is Luna, which has spent the last several years in the American top 20 while Selene sat at #621 in 2025. Same idea, same beauty, a fraction of the traffic.

The chemical element selenium is named after her, which is a small piece of trivia that tends to delight the eventual owner of the name.

Sevasti

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Respected, venerable
• Pronunciation: se-vah-STEE

Sevasti comes from sebastos, venerable, which was the Greek translation of the Roman imperial title Augustus. When Rome needed a Greek word for its emperor’s honorific, this is the one it took.

That single root fans out further than you would expect. The same word gives the Germanic, Spanish and French name Sebastian, so Sevasti and Sebastian are the same idea in different clothing.

The stress on the final syllable keeps it from sounding soft, which suits a name that means respected.

Sophia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Wisdom
• Pronunciation: so-FEE-ah
• Variations: Sofia
• Popularity: #5 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (12,561 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Falling in the United States, down 22% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

Sophia is the Greek word for wisdom, and it is the most successful name on this list by a distance, ranking #5 in the United States in 2025.

Its career as a name may rest on a misunderstanding. The Hagia Sophia in Constantinople was dedicated to Holy Wisdom, a theological concept rather than a person, but pilgrims read the dedication as a saint’s name, Holy Sophia, and started naming daughters after her.

A church dedicated to an abstract noun accidentally produced one of the steadiest girls’ names of the last thousand years. The Greek stress falls on the second syllable, so-FEE-ah, which is where Sofia and Sophia part company from the English SO-fee-ah.

Sotiria

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Salvation
• Pronunciation: so-tee-REE-ah
• Variations: Soteria

Sotiria is the feminine of Sotirios, from soter, saviour, and the abstract noun soteria, deliverance. Theologians still use soteriology for the study of salvation, so the word never left academic English even though the name never entered it.

It is a common, unremarkable name in Greece and Cyprus and effectively unknown elsewhere, which is the pattern for most of the multisyllable entries on this list. Sotiroula is its diminutive.

Spyridoula

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Basket, or spirit
• Pronunciation: spee-ree-DHOO-lah

The etymology is genuinely split. Spyridoula is the feminine of Spyridon, which either comes from the Greek spyridion, a small basket, or from the Latin spiritus, spirit. Scholars have not chosen, so the meaning above gives both.

Saint Spyridon, a fourth-century bishop of Tremithus who lived through the persecutions under Diocletian, is why the name stayed in use at all, and Greek families still name daughters after him in its feminine form.

The -oula ending does the same work here that it does in Stavroula and Anthoula further along this list: it softens a formal saint’s name into something a family can say every day.

Stavroula

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Cross
• Pronunciation: stav-ROO-lah
• Namesakes: Stavroula Tsolakidou, Greek chess champion

Stavroula is the feminine of Stavros, from stavros, the cross, with the affectionate -oula ending that shows up all over this list.

Stavroula Tsolakidou is the reason to know the name outside Greece. Born in 2000, she took the Woman FIDE Master title at fourteen while winning the World U14 Girls Championship, added the Woman International Master title the same year as Greece’s top-ranked female player, then won the World U16 title in 2015 and the World U18 in 2016, before earning her Woman Grandmaster title in 2018.

That is three world age-group titles before she could legally drink, and the name has been quietly attached to a chess prodigy ever since.

Stefania

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Wreath, crown
• Pronunciation: ste-fah-NEE-ah
• Variations: Stephania, Stefanie

Stefania is the Greek feminine of Stephen, from stephanos, the wreath given to a victor rather than a crown handed to a monarch. It is an earned thing, not an inherited one.

A wreath in Greek was what a victor was handed at the games, so the name records an achievement rather than a rank. That is a better wish than most crown names manage.

The Greek-Dutch singer Stefania represented Greece at Junior Eurovision in 2016 and was set to return for the main contest in 2020 before it was cancelled. She went in 2021 instead, and is a successful YouTuber alongside the music.

Styliani

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Pillar
• Pronunciation: stee-lee-ah-NEE
• Variations: Stella

Styliani is the feminine of Stylianos, from stylos, a pillar or column, which is also the root of the English word style by a long and indirect route through the writing stylus.

The connection worth knowing is that Stella, one of the most familiar names in Europe, is used in Greece as the diminutive of Styliani rather than as the Latin word for star. Two entirely separate names have collapsed into one nickname.

It is used mainly in Greece and Cyprus, and it is almost always feminine, with a scattering of masculine use in the small English-speaking communities that have it.

Thalia

• Origin: Ancient Greek
• Meaning: To blossom
• Pronunciation: THAH-lee-ah
• Popularity: #648 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (446 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Rising in the United States, up 40% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

Thalia comes from thallo, to bloom, and she had two jobs in mythology: one of the three Graces, and the Muse of comedy and pastoral poetry. The comic mask is hers, opposite her sister Melpomeni’s tragic one, which is the pair you see over theatre doors everywhere.

It is the most wearable of the blossom names on this list, and it makes a natural sister name for Chrysanthi, Evanthia or Anthe, since all four are built on the same flowering root.

At #647 in the US in 2025 it is recognizable without being common, which is a hard balance for a name this pretty to strike.

Thekla

• Origin: Ancient Greek
• Meaning: Glory of God
• Pronunciation: THEK-lah
• Variations: Theokleia, Thecla

Thekla is a contraction of Theokleia, from theos, god, and kleos, glory, the same second element that turns up in Charicleia and Kleopatra on this list.

Saint Thekla is the subject of the second-century Acts of Paul and Thecla. She hears Paul preach on chastity, converts, and breaks off her engagement, which lands her in front of the authorities; she is sentenced to death and survives repeatedly, in the telling by a series of miracles. The story was popular enough that her cult spread across the early Christian world.

Two blunt syllables and a hard k make it one of the least frilly names here, which for some parents is exactly the point.

Theodora

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Gift of God
• Pronunciation: the-o-DHO-rah
• Variations: Theodosia, Dora
• Popularity: #726 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (384 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Rising in the United States, up 418% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

From theos, God, and doron, gift, and the same two elements reversed give Dorothea. They are the same name in different order.

The most famous Theodora was the sixth-century Byzantine empress. Daughter of a bear keeper at the Hippodrome, an actress and courtesan before she met Justinian, she could only marry him after the law barring such matches was changed for her. When the Nika riots looked like ending his reign and he was ready to flee, she is reported to have told him that it is intolerable for someone who has reigned to become a fugitive, and he stayed. She later pushed through reforms on divorce and on the treatment of women that were centuries ahead of schedule.

For a family that waited a long time for a child, the meaning does a lot of quiet work. It also has the range that many long names lack: formal enough for a signature, and it collapses into Dora, Dorie or Theo for a four-year-old.

Theofania

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Manifestation of God
• Pronunciation: the-o-fah-NEE-ah
• Variations: Theophania

Theofania is the modern spelling of Theophania, feminine of Theophanes, and the ph becoming an f is the single most common change between ancient and modern Greek spellings on this list.

It was traditionally given to girls born on the Epiphany, January 6th, which in the Orthodox calendar marks Christ’s baptism in the Jordan rather than the visit of the Magi. It is also the day of the Great Blessing of the Waters, when a Greek priest casts a cross into the sea and swimmers race to bring it back; whoever reaches it first is blessed along with their household.

The name has an unlikely English relative: Tiffany is the same word, worn down through Old French, which is why a name that now suggests a jewellery box started life as a feast day. Fani, higher up this list, is its short form.

Timothea

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Honoring God
• Pronunciation: tee-mo-THE-ah

Timothea is the feminine of Timothy, from timao, to honor, and theos, God. The elements are the same as Theodora’s, with the direction of the gift reversed: Theodora is what God gives, Timothea is what is given back.

It breaks the pattern of this list in one respect. Most of the rare names here are rare everywhere except Greece; Timothea is rare in Greece too, and the largest group of people carrying it live in the United States.

So it reads as Greek without being a name Greek families would recognize as current, which suits parents who want the sound rather than the tradition.

Vaia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Palm branches
• Pronunciation: vah-EE-ah
• Variations: Vagia

Vaia does not translate as palm branch so much as point at a day. It comes from Kyriaki ton Vaion, the Sunday of the Palms, the Orthodox name for Palm Sunday.

Because Easter moves, so does the date, which makes Vaia one of the few Greek names with no fixed name day. It is celebrated on the Sunday before Easter, wherever that falls in a given year, and it is still regularly given to girls born on it.

Two syllables, a soft V, and a meaning that is really an occasion rather than a quality.

Varvara

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Foreign
• Pronunciation: var-VAH-rah
• Variations: Barbara, Barbra

Varvara is the Greek form of Barbara, from barbaros, which the Greeks used for anyone who did not speak Greek. The word is said to be an imitation of how foreign speech sounded to them, bar-bar, which makes it one of the bluntest etymologies in the language.

It is common in Greece, Russia and Ukraine and effectively absent outside the Greek and Slavic worlds. In some of those countries it reads as an old-fashioned girl name that has fallen out of use; in others it has come back as exactly the sort of great-grandmother name that is fashionable again.

Vara and Varya both work as short forms.

Vasiliki

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Royal
• Pronunciation: vah-see-lee-KEE
• Variations: Vassiliki, Vasileia

Vasiliki is the feminine of Vasilios, from basileus, king, so the sense is royal or kingly rather than queen.

The spelling illustrates something that trips up everyone reading Greek names for the first time. The Greek letter beta once sounded like a b and now sounds like a v, so ancient Basileia and modern Vasiliki are the same word two thousand years apart. Once you know that, half the names on this list stop looking strange.

Vaso, Vasia and Kiki all come out of it, which gives a four-syllable name plenty of everyday options.

Venetia

• Origin: Latin, used in Greek
• Meaning: From Venice
• Pronunciation: ve-ne-TEE-ah
• Namesakes: Venetia Burney, who named the planet Pluto

Venetia is the Greek and Latin name for Venice and the region around it, so it belongs with the place names rather than the virtue names on this list.

Its best story belongs to an English girl. On March 14th, 1930, eleven-year-old Venetia Burney heard her grandfather read out that a new planet had been found, and suggested Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld, because he could make himself invisible. Her grandfather passed it to an astronomer, it reached Clyde Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory, and the name was formally adopted that May.

There is a pleasing circularity in an English child with a Greek name choosing the Roman version of a Greek god. The asteroid 6235 Burney and an impact basin on Pluto itself are named after her, and the New Horizons probe carried an instrument bearing her name when it reached the planet in 2015.

Viktoria

• Origin: Latin, used in Greek
• Meaning: Victory
• Pronunciation: veek-to-REE-ah
• Variations: Victoria, Viktoriya

Viktoria is the Greek spelling of Victoria, the feminine of Victor, and the root is the Latin victoria rather than anything Greek.

That is the small irony of the name. Greek has a perfectly good word of its own for victory, nike, which was also the winged goddess who personified it and which now sells running shoes. Greek families reached past it for the Latin one anyway.

So Viktoria is a Latin idea in Greek dress, and Nike is the Greek original that English speakers no longer hear as a name at all.

Xanthippi

• Origin: Ancient Greek
• Meaning: Yellow horse
• Pronunciation: ksan-THEE-pee
• Variations: Xanthippe

The elements are xanthos, golden or reddish, and hippos, horse, and a horse in a Greek name almost always signalled a family with money, since horses were what the aristocracy owned.

Its reputation comes from one marriage. Xanthippe was the wife of Socrates, and Xenophon called her the harshest and most ill-tempered of women, an assessment that Chaucer and Shakespeare cheerfully passed along until her name became shorthand for a difficult wife.

The case against her is thinner than it looks. Plato mentions her once and shows nothing of the kind, and from the nineteenth century onwards scholars have re-read the same anecdotes as evidence of a woman who spoke her mind to a husband who did not earn a living. Which version you get depends entirely on who is telling it.

Xenia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Hospitality
• Pronunciation: KSE-nee-ah
• Variations: Xeni, Ksenia

Xenia is one of the few Greek words that names a whole moral system. The host owed a guest food, shelter, gifts and safe passage; the guest owed courtesy and the same treatment in return one day. Zeus Xenios enforced it, and since the Greeks believed gods walked among them in disguise, every stranger at the door might be one.

It is also why the Trojan War starts. Paris takes Helen from the house of Menelaus, who was hosting him, and the offence the Greeks avenge is the broken hospitality as much as the marriage.

The root is xenos, which means both foreigner and guest, and English kept only the wary half of it in xenophobia. Greek kept the generous half.

Since Varvara on this list means foreign and Xenia means hospitality to foreigners, the two make an unusually thoughtful pair of twin names.

Zacharoula

• Origin: Greek, from Hebrew
• Meaning: Yahweh remembers
• Pronunciation: zah-hah-ROO-lah

Zacharoula is the Greek feminine diminutive of Zacharias, the Greek form of the Hebrew Zechariah, from zakar, to remember, and yah, God. In the gospels, Zacharias is the father of John the Baptist.

It is used almost entirely in Greece and Cyprus, and there is a happy accident in the sound: the Greek word for sugar is zachari, so the name reads as something close to little sugar to a Greek ear even though the roots are unrelated.

It is also a traditional folk song and its dance, first performed in the Veria region and now danced across the country.

Zenovia

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Life of Zeus
• Pronunciation: zee-no-VEE-ah
• Variations: Zinovia, Zenobia

Zenovia is a transcription of Zinovia, the Greek form of Zenobia, joining Zeus to the root for life.

The historical Zenobia ruled Palmyra in the third century. Regent for her young son after her husband’s assassination, she held real power for five years, took Egypt in 270 and controlled territory from central Anatolia to the upper Nile before Aurelian besieged her capital and captured her in 272. She is one of the very few ancient women remembered as a conqueror rather than a consort.

The American composer Zenobia Powell Perry carried the name into the twentieth century. One of very few African American women writing concert music, she wrote in a clear tonal style shaped by her father’s slave songs and by Booker T. Washington, for whom she sang at thirteen.

Zoi

• Origin: Greek
• Meaning: Life
• Pronunciation: zo-EE
• Variations: Zoe, Zoey
• Popularity: #5,237 among U.S. girls’ names in 2025 (25 births), per U.S. Social Security Administration data. Falling in the United States, down 22% over the last 10 years of births against the 10 years before them.

Zoi is the modern Greek spelling of Zoe, and it means life with nothing else attached. Greek has two words for it, and this is the one for life itself rather than the shape a particular life takes.

It is short, warm, and the whole name is a good wish, which is rare. The English spelling Zoe reached #31 in the United States in 2025; the Greek Zoi is the same name with the original ending restored.

One thing to settle early. The Greek stress falls on the second syllable, zo-EE, two beats, and English speakers reading it cold will say ZOY to rhyme with boy every single time. Whichever you choose, choose it before the first roll call.