Safiyya
given name · Latin script
Meaning: 'the chosen one'; Jewish woman, seventh wife of Prophet Muhammad, d
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 18 countries · latest register: Guyana, 2025
/safijja/(machine-generated) Malay · model-generated
Safiyya is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 27K(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 54K
- GYGuyana1 in 125K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 79 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 13K (inferred from the name graph)
≈8,800 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Azerbaijan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)'the chosen one'; Jewish woman, seventh wife of Prophet Muhammad, d. 672.
Cited for this meaning 1
- African Muslim Names
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Safiyya 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | ≈8,800 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Safiyya | 31 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | ≈790 est. | ≈1 in 13K | 27 | Safiyya | 1 |
| IN India | ≈670 est. | ≈1 in 2.2M | — | Safiyya | 13 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈650 est. | ≈1 in 54K | — | Safiyya | 18 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈500 est. | ≈1 in 129K | — | Safiyya | 19 |
| NL Netherlands | 30 | 1 in 576K | 30 | Safiyya | 2 |
| GY Guyana | 6 | 1 in 125K | 6 | — | 1 |
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: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)Safiyya is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Arabic, immaculate
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
‘Confidante’, ‘bosom friend’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
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)- Safiya Zaghloulb. 1876EGnot in their usual nameEgyptian activist and leader
- Safia el-Mohandesb. 1922EGnot in their usual nameEgyptian journalist
- Safiya Nobleb. 1950USnot in their usual nameAmerican professor and author
- Safiya Bukharib. 1950USnot in their usual nameAmerican political activist (1950-2003)
- Safiya Hussainib. 1967NGnot in their usual nameNigerian woman accused of adultery
- Safiya Songhaib. 1984USnot in their usual nameAmerican film director
- Safiya Sinclairb. 1984JMnot in their usual namepoet
- Safiya Wazirb. 1991AFnot in their usual nameCommunity activist - first Afghan refugee to be elected as a state representative in New Hampshire, United States.
- Safiya Kayginnot in their usual nameactress
- Safiya YusufNGnot in their usual nameNigerian actress and hip-hop artist
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)24 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 30 | #11,511 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics | — | 27 | — |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 24 | #17,689 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 6 | #588 |
Reference works 1
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
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
- How do you pronounce Safiyya?
- It depends on the language: in Malay /safijja/; in Indonesian /safijja/; in Swahili /safijjɑ/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Where does the name Safiyya come from?
- 'the chosen one'; Jewish woman, seventh wife of Prophet Muhammad, d. 672. Recorded by African Muslim Names.
- Is Safiyya a male or female name?
- Safiyya 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.
- What does the name Safiyya mean?
- Recorded meaning: 'the chosen one'; Jewish woman, seventh wife of Prophet Muhammad, d.
- In which country does Safiyya have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 8.8 thousand people named Safiyya in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled safiyya.
- How common is the name Safiyya?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 30 people named Safiyya, about 1 in 576 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Safiyya?
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/safiyyaThe 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, “Safiyya”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.