Selva
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: forest or jungle, wood, chiefly a rainforest
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/selba/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Selva is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country.
- UYUruguay1 in 1.7K(measured from records)
- PYParaguay≈1 in 2.3K
- SYSyria≈1 in 2.5K
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.
- Argentina (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 142 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈13,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
forest or jungle, wood, chiefly a rainforest
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Selva is read(measured from records)
Selva is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- Spanish52%
forest or jungle, wood, chiefly a rainforest
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Turkish18%
1. Bıldırcın eti. 2. Tih Çölünde bulundukları sürece İsrailoğullarına Allah tarafından kudret helvasıyla birlikte, karınlarını duyurmaları için gönderildiğine inanılan kuş.
as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
- Hindi11%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Selva in Hindi.
- Arabic7.0%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Selva in Arabic.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Selva 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | #523 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | 1.4K | Selva | 63 |
| SY Syria | #599 | ≈7,800 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Selva | 4 |
| TR Türkiye | — | ≈5,600 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Selva | 44 |
| PY Paraguay | #259 | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Selva | 25 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Selva | 18 |
| UY Uruguay | #187 | 2,038 | 1 in 1.7K | 2K | Selva | 25 |
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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE Uruguay — Nombres más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)
Selva is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Italian, oriundo de localidades chamadas Selva; do lat. silva ‘floresta’
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In Portuguese, jungle
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese
In English, Heavily forested ground in the Amazon basin.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Catalan, jungle, rainforest
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Selva Casalb. 1927UYUruguayan writer
- Selva Xtabayb. 1930ARArgentinian actor
- Selva Alemánb. 1944ARArgentinian actor
- Selva Erdenerb. 1966TRTurkish singer (born 1966)
- Selva Rasalingamb. 1968GBBritish film actor (born 1968)
- Selva Almadab. 1973ARArgentinian writer
- Selva Mayob. 2000ESSpanish television presenter
- SelvaINIndian actor and film director
- SelvaINIndian film director
- Selva SelvaratnamBritish businessman
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 63 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Nombres más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 2K | — |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Nombres más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 2K | — |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Nombres más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 12 | — |
| AR Argentina | datos.gob.ar — nombres.datos.gob.ar per-name lookup (1922–2015) | 2015 | 7 | — |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — births 1922–2015 (Kaggle mirror) | 2015 | 7 | — |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present) | 2024 | 6 | #2,624 |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Selva mean, and where does it come from?
- forest or jungle, wood, chiefly a rainforest Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Selva?
- A machine transcription gives /selba/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- Is Selva a male or female name?
- Selva 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 Selva have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 13 thousand people named Selva in Argentina, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled selva.
- Where is Selva most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Selva is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 1.7 thousand people — even though Argentina holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Selva?
- In Uruguay, the national register counted 2,038 people named Selva, about 1 in 1.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Selva compared with other names?
- In Argentina, Selva is the 523rd most common given name of 119,825 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Selva?
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/selvaThe 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, “Selva” — the 523rd most common given name in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.