Athena (Αθηνά) is the name of the Greek goddess of wisdom, weaving, strategic warfare, and craft — patron of Athens, daughter of Zeus, born fully formed from her father's head. She is one of the twelve Olympian gods and one of the most consistently depicted figures in Greek art.
The etymology of the name is itself ancient and contested: it may pre-date Greek entirely, surviving from a Bronze Age Minoan religion absorbed into Greek mythology. As a given name, Athena has been used rarely in modern times — but its use is rising sharply. Today it sits in the U.S. top 100.
Athena does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Athena reduce to 4, The Builder. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.