Şava
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Şava is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Croatia than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Of pre-Slavic origin, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sewh₁ (“to take liquid”) + *-eh₂, thus meaning something like "that which waters." The name in Greek was Σάος (Sáos).
- USUnited States1 in 606K(measured from records)
- MDMoldova1 in 4.2K
- HRCroatia1 in 4.5K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Croatia (measured from records)
- Sources
- 176 (measured from records)
- 1 in 4.2K (inferred from the name graph)
933 people, 2021
Highest-authority source
Moldova
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Sava in US United States.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Of pre-Slavic origin, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sewh₁ (“to take liquid”) + *-eh₂, thus meaning something like "that which waters." The name in Greek was Σάος (Sáos).
Sources 5
- Dictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol II (N-H)
- Russian Names
- TDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
- Wiktionary
- Dictionar Onomastic Rominesc
Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Şava counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
933 people counted by DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form), 2021. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); e-services.md — living population register; dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); SURS — resident population given names; INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts); PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register); PMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Şava mean, and where does it come from?
- Of pre-Slavic origin, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sewh₁ (“to take liquid”) + *-eh₂, thus meaning something like "that which waters." The name in Greek was Σάος (Sáos). Recorded by Dictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol II (N-H) and Russian Names and 3 other sources.
- In which country does Şava have the most bearers?
- In Croatia, the national register counted about 933 people named Şava, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Şava most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Şava is densest in Moldova — about 1 in 4.2 thousand people — even though Croatia holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Şava?
- In Croatia, the national register counted 933 people named Şava in 2021, about 1 in 4.5 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Şava?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%C5%9FavaThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Şava”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.