Winona

Meaning

Proper Noun

• A female given name, used mainly in the United States.
• city Kansas (state)
• city, county seat Winona County (county) Minnesota (state).
• city, county seat Montgomery County (county) Mississippi (state).
• city Missouri (state)
• town Texas (state)

Origin

• From a Dakota winúŋna. 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- + no + -na (a diminutive suffix) and thus a reflex of Proto-Siouan *rǫ/*nǫ. That root is otherwise unattested in the Sioux languages, which use reflexes of *wį(y)ą instead, and a more prosaic analysis identifies the first elements of the name with winyan.