Vilma is the Hungarian, Finnish, and Spanish short form of Wilhelmina — from the Old Germanic wil ("will, desire") + helm ("helmet, protection") — "resolute protector." A top-1000 US baby name in the early 20th century, especially in immigrant communities. Vilma Bánky (1901-1991) — *Hungarian-American silent-film actress; one of the highest-paid stars of the late silent era; discovered by Samuel Goldwyn in Budapest in 1925; paired with Rudolph Valentino in The Eagle (1925) and The Son of the Sheik (1926) — Valentino's final film — and with Ronald Colman in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926); her Hungarian accent ended her career with the arrival of sound film. Vilma Espín (1930-2007) — Cuban revolutionary and chemical engineer; founder of the Federation of Cuban Women (1960); wife of Raúl Castro; one of the most-powerful women in revolutionary Cuba. Vilma Santos (born 1953) — Filipino actress and politician; "Star for All Seasons" of Philippine cinema; Governor of Batangas (2007-2016) and Congresswoman; one of the most-awarded actresses in Philippine film history. Wilma is the English equivalent (already in the library). Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy* — Hungarian portrait painter.
Featured throughout silent cinema and 20th-century history.
Vilma 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 Vilma reduce to 3, The Communicator. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.