Safia
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Swahili/Arabic: 'pure, wise' or 'lion's share'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/safja/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Safia is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country.
- DZAlgeria≈1 in 5K(inferred from the name graph)
- MAMorocco≈1 in 5.3K
- FRFrance≈1 in 11K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 253 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈19,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Tanzania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Swahili/Arabic: 'pure, wise' or 'lion's share'
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Safia is read(measured from records)
Safia is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- French33%
Prénom féminin d’origine arabe, formé a partir du nom commun safia, « confidente », « amie intime ». Le nom a été souvent rapproché de safa, « étre pur », « étre choisi » et, ainsi, lié 4 ’idée d’excellence (— MUSTAPHA). ¥€ A la fin du xx‘s., le prénom était vivant parmi les populations francaises issues de l’immigration, mais restait ce- pendant d’un usage modeste
as a nameDictionnaire des prénoms
- English16%
Arabic: pure, sincere
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- Arabic10%
pure, clear, crystal; feminine of Saafi
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
- Hindi9.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Safia in Hindi.
- Urdu5.6%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Safia in Urdu.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Safia 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | listed | Safia | 53 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | — | Safia | 14 |
| AF Afghanistan | #610 | ≈9,400 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | 2 | Safia | 10 |
| DZ Algeria | #294 | ≈8,600 est. | ≈1 in 5K | listed | Safia | 31 |
| MA Morocco | #677 | ≈6,700 est. | ≈1 in 5.3K | listed | Safia | 56 |
| FR France | #986 | ≈6,000 est. | ≈1 in 11K | 7.3K | Safia | 253 |
| US United States | — | 2,837 | 1 in 117K | 2.8K | Safia | 230 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; the ma-etatcivil-authorized-given-names register; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Safia is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swahili, Swahili/Arabic: 'pure, wise' or 'lion's share'
as a nameAfrican Names
In Swedish, Safia är ett arabiskt namn som betyder ’förtrogen; lojal’.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In German, ) Safiyya: weibl. Vom. arabischen
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Safiyyah bint ‘Abd al-Muttalibb. 570SAnot in their usual nameSahaba
- Al-Hujayjahb. 600not in their usual nameArabic poet
- Safia Ahmed-janb. 1941AFWomen's rights advocate from Afghanistan (1941-2006)
- Safia El Emarib. 1949EGEgyptian actress
- Safia Farkashb. 1952LYsecond wife of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi
- Safia Abdi Haaseb. 1959NOnurse
- Safia Shahb. 1966GBBritish writer, editor, television news producer, independent retailer
- Safia Otokoréb. 1969FRFrench politician
- Safia Abukar Husseinb. 1981SOSomalian sprinter
- Safia Boukhimab. 1991DZAlgerian volleyball player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 74 sources across 42 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 7.3K | #392 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.8K | #5,851 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 75 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 13 | #5,851 |
| MA Morocco | Liste des prénoms d'usage au Maroc — official authorized given-names list | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Safia mean, and where does it come from?
- Swahili/Arabic: 'pure, wise' or 'lion's share' Recorded by African Names.
- How do you pronounce Safia?
- A machine transcription gives /safja/ (IPA) for French.
- Is Safia a male or female name?
- Safia is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Safia have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 19 thousand people named Safia in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled safia.
- How common is the name Safia?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,837 people named Safia in 2020, about 1 in 117 thousand residents.
- How common is Safia compared with other names?
- In Algeria, Safia is the 294th most common given name of 27,215 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Safia?
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/safiaThe 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, “Safia” — the 294th most common given name in Algeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.