Sylvia
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: From Latin silva, ‘wood’ or ‘forest’; also the name of a sixth-century saint, mother of Pope Gregory the Great
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/sɪlʋiə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sylvia is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country, where it is the 52nd most common given name.
- USUnited States1 in 2.2K(measured from records)
- ARArgentina≈1 in 155as Silvia
- PLPoland1 in 210as Sylwia
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Sylvia itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Argentina (inferred from the name graph)
- #169 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 549 (measured from records)
- 1 in 962 (inferred from the name graph)
≈290,000 named Silvia, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Silvia in AR Argentina, BR Brazil, PL Poland and 1 more, Силвия in BG Bulgaria and Сильвия in FI Finland.
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)
From Latin silva, ‘wood’ or ‘forest’; also the name of a sixth-century saint, mother of Pope Gregory the Great.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
How Sylvia is read(measured from records)
Sylvia is one spelling over 3 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.
- English67%
From Latin silva, ‘wood’ or ‘forest’; also the name of a sixth-century saint, mother of Pope Gregory the Great.
as a nameIrish first names
A female given name from Latin, a popular spelling variant of Silvia.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish9.6%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Sylvia in Spanish.
- German6.0%
weibl. Vom., sprachlich unrichtige, aber häufig gebrauchte Schreibweise von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Sylvia, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sylvia 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 | #52 | ≈290,000 est. | ≈1 in 155 | 52 | Silvia | 174 |
| IT Italy | #207 | ≈190,000 est. | ≈1 in 331 | 212 | Sylvia | 169 |
| PL Poland | #809 | 181,946as Sylwia | 1 in 210 | 182K | Silvia | 41 |
| BR Brazil | #123 | 180,610as Silvia | 1 in 1.2K | 204K | Silvia | 205 |
| US United States | #221 | 152,900 | 1 in 2.2K | 153K | Sylvia | 549 |
| SV El Salvador | #68 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 225 | — | Silvia | 48 |
| BG Bulgaria | #41 | 24,517as Силвиа | 1 in 284 | 25K | Силвия | 112 |
| MD Moldova | — | 11,335as Silvia | 1 in 297 | 11K | — | 17 |
| FI Finland | — | 5,792 | 1 in 962 | 16K | Сильвия | 16 |
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; RENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); NSI — most common given names (population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); e-services.md — living population 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)
Sylvia 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.
Variant spelling of pSilvia. It is now rather more common than the plain form.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Swedish, Sylvia är ett latinskt namn, liksom → Silvia en femininform till Silvius, bildat till latinets silva ’skog’. Rhea Silvia var enligt myten mor till Roms grundläggare Romulus och Remus. I både den rikssvenska och finlandssvenska almanackan 8 augusti.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
English: variant, respelled for elegance, of SILVIA . It is now rather more common than the plain form.
as a word
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)
- Sylvia Pankhurstb. 1882GBEnglish feminist and socialist (1882–1960)
- Sylvia Sidneyb. 1910USAmerican actress (1910–1999)
- Sylvia Milesb. 1924USAmerican actress (1924-2019)
- Sylvia Plathb. 1932USAmerican poet and writer (1932–1963)
- Sylvia Earleb. 1935USAmerican oceanographer
- Silvia Sommerlathb. 1943SEqueen consort of Sweden
- Silvia Cartwrightb. 1943NZNew Zealand viceroy, jurist
- Sylvia Kristelb. 1952NLDutch actress, model, recording artist (1952-2012)
- Silvia Saintb. 1976CZCzech pornographic actress
- Sylvia Hoeksb. 1983NLDutch actress (born 1983)
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 107 sources across 60 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 153K | #364 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 16K | #145 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 5.8K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 3.5K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 3.5K | #3,475 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 3.1K | #4,579 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 1K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 685 | #575 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20) | 2026 | 685 | #575 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 224 | #364 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2010 | 49 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 10 | #37,687 |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 are other forms of the name Sylvia?
- In the etymology graph, Silvia, Sylvie and Silvina are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Is Sylvia a male or female name?
- Sylvia 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 Sylvia mean, and where does it come from?
- From Latin silva, ‘wood’ or ‘forest’; also the name of a sixth-century saint, mother of Pope Gregory the Great. Recorded by Irish first names.
- How do you pronounce Sylvia?
- A machine transcription gives /sɪlʋiə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Sylvia have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 294 thousand people named Silvia in Argentina, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Sylvia most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Sylvia is densest in Finland — about 1 in 962 people — even though Argentina holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Sylvia?
- In the United States, the national register counted 152,900 people named Sylvia in 2020, about 1 in 2.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Sylvia compared with other names?
- In Argentina, Sylvia is the 52nd most common given name of 119,825 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sylvia?
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/sylviaThe 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, “Sylvia” — the 52nd most common given name in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.