Is Donna a Biblical Name? No, It Is Italian for Lady

Donna is not in the Bible. It is the Italian word for “lady,” from the Latin domina, the feminine of dominus, “lord.” The nearest thing to it in Scripture is the opening of John’s second letter, which is addressed “to the lady chosen by God.”

What does Donna mean?

Donna means “lady.” In Latin, domina was the mistress of a household, and dominus was its master; Latin-speaking Christians used Dominus for the Lord. Italian wore domina down to donna and kept it both as the ordinary word for a woman and as a title. Madonna, “my lady,” is what Italians call Mary, the mother of Jesus.

As an English given name Donna is a twentieth-century arrival. It grew popular from the 1920s, reached its peak in the United States in 1959, and was the eighth most common name for American girls born in the 1960s. It is also used as a feminine form of Donald or Don.

Is Donna in the Bible?

No. Donna is Italian and occurs nowhere in Scripture, so it has no Hebrew meaning either.

The “chosen lady” of 2 John

John’s second letter begins: “The elder, To the lady chosen by God and to her children, whom I love in the truth” (2 John 1). The Greek word for “lady” is kyria, the feminine of kyrios, “lord,” which is the word the New Testament uses for the Lord. Greek forms “lady” from “lord” just as Latin does, so kyria in 2 John means what Donna means.

Readers have disagreed for centuries about who she was. Some take her to be a real woman, perhaps one whose household was a church. Others read “the lady” as a way of addressing a whole congregation, with “her children” as its members. The letter ends, “The children of your sister, who is chosen by God, send their greetings” (2 John 13), and that closing fits either reading: a sister’s children, or a sister church.

Related reading

• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names
• Facts and Statistics About Mary, Mother of Jesus