Persephone (Περσεφόνη) is the queen of the underworld in Greek mythology — daughter of Demeter (goddess of grain) and Zeus, abducted by Hades to be his queen, allowed to return to her mother for half the year. The myth explains the seasons: when Persephone is below, winter; when she returns, spring.
The etymology is contested. The name has been rising in the U.S.
Persephone 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 Persephone reduce to 4, The Builder. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.