Anna · Daily fortune

Anna is the form of Hannah used in the Greek and Latin Old Testament; Behind the Name gives the root as Hebrew ḥanan, though the gloss is not stated in the material used here. In the New Testament it belongs to a prophetess who recognized Jesus as the Messiah, and in the Middle Ages it spread among Western Christians through veneration of Saint Anna (Saint Anne), the traditional name of the Virgin Mary's mother. In England the Latin form has been used alongside Ann and Anne since the late Middle Ages, and since the 1970s Anna has been the most common of the three, though Hannah is more popular still. It ranked #107 for girls in the United States in 2025.

Behind the Name describes Anna as the "form of Hannah used in the Greek and Latin Old Testament", noting that many later translations, including the English, use the Hannah spelling instead. The root is given as ḥanan; its gloss is not included in the fetched facts, so the literal meaning is left to the Hannah entry. The name "was a popular name in the Byzantine Empire from an early date, and in the Middle Ages it became common among Western Christians due to veneration of Saint Anna (usually known as Saint Anne in English)". The entry lists an enormous set of forms across Europe; the English variants are Anissa, Ann and Anne, and it notes an 18th-century Russian empress and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1877) as bearers.

Anna ranked #107 for girls in the United States in 2025 (Social Security Administration). Behind the Name says Anna has been the most common of the Ann, Anne and Anna spellings in all English-speaking countries since the 1970s, while the biblical form Hannah is currently more popular than all three.

Anna is about as simple as a name gets: two syllables, a palindrome on the page, and a form that exists in almost every European language, so it never needs translating. In English it reads timeless rather than trendy, plainer than Annabelle or Anastasia but with a long saintly and literary pedigree behind it.

Other short classic girls' names from the Bible and the saints, and names from Anna's own family.