Sheena

The name moved a long distance to become Sheena. It began as Yochanan in Hebrew — God is gracious — traveled through the Greek and Latin of early Christianity, arrived in France as Jeanne, crossed to Scotland where it became the Gaelic Sìne, and finally emerged in English as Sheena, the form used by Scots who needed a way to write the Gaelic name for English readers. Each step changed the sound considerably, but the meaning held through all of it.

The twentieth century gave the name two distinct cultural anchors. Sheena Easton, the Scottish singer whose voice defined a certain bright strand of 1980s pop, wore it through major international stardom. Before her, Sheena Queen of the Jungle was a pulp comics heroine of the 1930s and 40s, a white woman raised by an African tribe who ruled the jungle — problematic by any contemporary measure, but culturally persistent enough that the name absorbed some of her wildness and independence. The Ramones also claimed it, briefly.

In 2026 the name sits in comfortable obscurity, not charting but not forgotten, the kind of name parents occasionally rediscover with genuine pleasure. Two clean syllables, an airy sh blooming into a long e. It feels like Scottish highlands and new-wave radio simultaneously, heather and synths, which is not a combination many names can manage. Playful, bright, with just enough edge.