Anna

It is one of the few personal names whose spelling has remained nearly identical across thousands of years and dozens of languages.

The name appears in both Testaments. In the First Book of Samuel, Hannah is the long-childless mother of the prophet Samuel, whose prayer of thanksgiving in 1 Samuel 2 inspired Mary’s Magnificat in Luke.

In the New Testament, Saint Anna the Prophetess appears in Luke 2 as the elderly widow who recognizes the infant Jesus at his presentation in the Temple.

Catholic and Orthodox tradition also reveres Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, whose cult became one of the largest in medieval Europe, with major shrines at Sainte-Anne-d’Auray in Brittany and Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in Quebec.

Royal use is extensive: Anne of Bohemia, queen of Richard II of England; Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII and mother of Elizabeth I; Anne of Austria, regent of France; and Queen Anne of Great Britain (1665-1714), under whom the Acts of Union

created the United Kingdom.

Literary heroines include Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877), L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908), and the diarist Anne Frank, whose The Diary of a Young Girl (1947) is among the most-read works of the twentieth century.

Anna ranked inside the United States Social Security Administration top 5 throughout the 1880s and remained in the top 100 for over a century without interruption, an extraordinary record matched by few names.

It currently sits within the top 50, having peaked most recently around 23rd in 2010. Anna remains a top-20 choice in Germany, Italy, Greece, Russia, and across Scandinavia.

Disney’s Frozen (2013), featuring Princess Anna of Arendelle, gave the name renewed visibility for a new generation, ensuring its continuing place at the heart of the Western naming tradition.