# Winona

> English word · Proper noun · IPA /wɪˈnoʊnə/ · frequency rank #30,291

## Definitions
1. A female given name from Dakota, used mainly in the United States.
2. A city in Kansas.
3. A city, the county seat of Winona County, Minnesota.
4. A city, the county seat of Montgomery County, Mississippi.
5. A city in Missouri.
6. A town in Texas.

## Etymology
From Dakota winúŋna (“firstborn daughter”). While not originally used as a personal name by the Dakota, it has been adopted as such by English speakers.
John Koontz suggested that the name was a compound of wi- (“female”) + no (“first”) + -na (a diminutive suffix) and thus a reflex of Proto-Siouan *rǫ/*nǫ (“one”). That root is otherwise unattested in the Sioux languages, which use reflexes of *wį(y)ą (“one”) instead, and a more prosaic analysis identifies the first elements of the name with winyan (“woman”).

## Easily confused with
- **Winton** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/winona-vs-winton)
- **Winn** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/winn-vs-winona)
- **wanna** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/wanna-vs-winona)

## Common misspellings (8)
`iwnona`, `winnoa`, `winnona`, `winoan`, `winonna`, `wionna`, `wniona`, `wwinona`

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/winona