Shaya
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Alternative form of chaya (“leafy vegetable”)
Used for both men and women, depending on the country· national registers that list names by sex disagree
- United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed under both sexes
- Netherlands (Meertens NVB): listed as female
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 20 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025
/t͡ʃaʝa/(machine-generated) Spanish · model-generated
Shaya is a given name used for both men and women, depending on the country, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- UYUruguay1 in 72K(measured from records)
- NLNetherlands1 in 136K
- USUnited States1 in 170K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 226 (measured from records)
- 1 in 72K (inferred from the name graph)
1,960 people, 2020
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Alternative form of chaya (“leafy vegetable”).
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world
(measured from records)Shaya 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 1,960 | 1 in 170K | 1.2K | Shaya | 226 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈280 est. | ≈1 in 843K | listed | — | 3 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 1.6M | — | Shaya | 9 |
| NL Netherlands | 127 | 1 in 136K | 127 | Shaya | 14 |
| BR Brazil | 76 | 1 in 2.8M | 76 | — | — |
| AU Australia | ≈73 est. | ≈1 in 348K | 1 | Shaya | 55 |
| IL Israel | ≈71 est. | ≈1 in 122K | — | Shaya | 21 |
| UY Uruguay | 47 | 1 in 72K | 47 | — | — |
1,960 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); INE Uruguay — Nombres más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); the pk-muslim-names-cc0 register. 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)Shaya 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 ss, to beat, to strike, to flog, to hit
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Zulu, to hit, to strike, to beat
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)- Shaya Goldoustb. 1986IRIranian-born Canadian trans activist, radio presenter (born 1986)
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)41 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 20 countries.
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Shaya mean, and where does it come from?
- Alternative form of chaya (“leafy vegetable”). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Shaya?
- In Spanish /t͡ʃaʝa/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Is Shaya a male or female name?
- Shaya is used for both men and women, depending on the country. National registers that list names by sex disagree: United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed under both sexes; Netherlands (Meertens NVB): listed as female. We don't publish a percentage split.
- In which country does Shaya have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.0 thousand people named Shaya, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shaya.
- Where is Shaya most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Shaya is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 72 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Shaya?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,960 people named Shaya in 2020, about 1 in 170 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Shaya?
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/shayaThe 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, “Shaya”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.