Meaning and history
Edna is a Hebrew name meaning “pleasure,” derived from עָדַן (ʿaḏan), “to delight.” It appears in the Old Testament Apocrypha, including the Book of Tobit as the name of Raguel’s wife, and was borne by the American poet Edna Dean Proctor (1829–1923). The name did not become popular until the second half of the 19th century, when it was used for the heroine of Augusta Jane Evans’s successful 1866 novel St. Elmo; it peaked around the turn of the century and then declined steadily, leaving the American top 1000 in 1992.