Sheena

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A feminine first name of Irish origin, the Irish form of Jane ; a fictional jungle heroine who appeared in comics and later films and television
2. A woman's first name derived from the Irish form of Jane ; the title character of a comic-book series about a fearless queen of the African jungle
3. An Irish-derived female forename ; the protagonist of a jungle adventure comic who became a popular character in pulp fiction and film

Etymology: Sheena is a Scottish Gaelic name, and its surprising link is to a name that English has spelled in dozens of ways. Gaelic "Sìne" and "Síne" are the forms it comes from, and they trace back through Latin "Joanna" to the Koine Greek "Iōánna" and ultimately to the Hebrew "Yôḥānāh," meaning "God is gracious." That Hebrew name is the feminine form of the name that produced John, so Sheena is a distant relative of Jane, Joan, Jean and Janet. Those relatives are doublets, forms of one name that arrived in different languages and different eras. Ivana, Jana, Jeanne, Juana, Johanna, Siobhan and Sian all descend from the same root, and the Gaelic line produced Sheena as an anglicized spelling of the Gaelic forms. The name thus reached English through the Scottish Gaelic tradition rather than directly from the Latin or Greek.