Dana - Name Meaning and Popularity -

Meaning of Dana

Dana moves through history like a river of light: born, some say, from the ancient Celtic mother-goddess Danu whose waters nourished emerald valleys; claimed, as well, by Hebrew tradition as the gentle feminine of Daniel, ‘God is my judge’; cherished across Slavic tongues as a simple, ringing word for “gift”; and whispered in modern English as DAY-nuh, clear as a bell at dawn. From the mid-century’s quiet beginnings to the star-bright surge of the 1970s and 80s—when her syllables cascaded through American nurseries with the fervor of a fiesta—and onward to her present, steadier pulse, she has carried an aura of poised daring: small, swift, yet strong, like a silver hummingbird in a jasmine garden. In her two soft beats lives the promise of fairness and resolve, of giving and grace, so that parents who choose her invite into their home a name both familiar and timeless, as warm as a late-summer breeze drifting across the plazas of Sevilla and as enduring as the riverbeds that first gave her life.