📖 About Selena
Selena is a Latinised form of Greek Selénē (moon goddess, from sélas = light/radiance), whose myth of eternal love for the sleeping shepherd Endymion is one of antiquity's most beautiful stories; the name was made globally iconic by Selena Quintanilla (1971–1995), the 'Queen of Tejano,' whose posthumous album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 in 1995, and by Selena Gomez, who was named in her honour.
📍 Details
- OriginGreek
- Gender♀ Female
- MeaningVariant of Selene. Moon
🔀 Variants & Related Names
⭐ Famous People
- Selena Quintanilla-Pérez — Mexican-American singer (1971–1995), known as the 'Queen of Tejano music'; the most successful Tejano artist in history and one of the best-selling Latin musicians of all time; her posthumous album Dreaming of You (1995) debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 — the first album by a Latin artist to achieve this; murdered at twenty-three by the president of her fan club; her legacy as an icon of Latin American identity, female ambition, and cultural pride has only grown since her death.
- Selena Gomez — American singer and actress (born 1992), named by her parents after Selena Quintanilla; one of the most-followed people on Instagram in the world; known for pop hits including Come & Get It, Good for You, and Lose You to Love Me; also an actress (Wizards of Waverly Place) and producer; her openness about lupus, mental health struggles, and a kidney transplant (2017) has made her one of the most humanly relatable global celebrities.
- Selene and Endymion (Greek mythology) — The defining myth of the name: Selene, goddess of the moon, fell in love with the beautiful mortal shepherd Endymion sleeping eternally on Mount Latmos; she visited him each night, gazing at his sleeping face while moonlight bathed the earth; one of the most melancholy and beautiful love stories in Greek mythology — a goddess’s unrequitable devotion, love as the eternal vigil of the moon for the sleeping world; the myth has inspired paintings by Poussin, Girodet, and John Keats’s poem Endymion (1818).
- Selénē (Greek moon goddess) — The personification of the moon in Greek religion, distinct from Artemis; Selene drove her silver chariot across the night sky, measuring the months with her changing face; she was the daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, sister of Helios (the sun) and Eos (the dawn); her Roman equivalent was Luna; in Greek astronomical tradition, she governed the tides, the female cycle, and the passage of time — her name giving the element selenium (discovered 1817 and named for the moon because it occurs with tellurium, named for the earth).