Silja
given name · Latin script
Meaning: weibl. Vom., friesische, schwedische und finnische Kurzform von Cädlia (
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Silja is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Finland than in any other country.
- FIFinland1 in 884(measured from records)
- ISIceland1 in 1.3K
- EEEstonia≈1 in 3.3K
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.
- Finland (measured from records)
- Sources
- 56 (measured from records)
- 1 in 884 (inferred from the name graph)
6,304 people
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
weibl. Vom., friesische, schwedische und finnische Kurzform von Cädlia (
Sources 1
- DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Silja 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.
6,304 people counted by DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register). 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: DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); the ee-stat-nimed register; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Silja 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 Swedish, Silja är en främst finsk form av → Cecilia medan Silje är en norsk form av samma namn. Den norska formen har blivit populär de senaste åren. I den finlandssvenska almanackan 22 november.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Finnish (used also in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden): vernacular form of Cecilia (see CECILY ). The name was made famous by the novel The Maid Silja (1931) by Frans Eemil Sillanpää, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.
as a word
In Estonian, a female given name, equivalent to English Cecilia
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, Sievietes vārds
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)
- Silja Walterb. 1919CHSwiss Benedictine nun, novelist and poet (1919–2011)
- Anja Siljab. 1940DEGerman soprano (born 1940)
- Silja Rantanenb. 1955FIFinnish painter (born 1955)
- Silja Dögg Gunnarsdóttirb. 1973ISIcelandic politician
- Silja Clemensb. 1975DEGerman cinematographer and screenwriter
- Silja Hauksdóttirb. 1976ISIcelandic writer
- Silja Lehtinenb. 1985FIFinnish sailor
- Silja Kanervab. 1985USFinnish yacht racer
- Silja Goroškob. 1994EEEstonian association football player (born 1994)
- Silja Kosonenb. 2002FIFinnish hammer thrower
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 35 sources across 19 countries.
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Silja?
- In the etymology graph, Cecilia, Sheila and Celia are forms of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Silja mean?
- Recorded meaning: weibl. Vom., friesische, schwedische und finnische Kurzform von Cädlia (
- Is Silja a male or female name?
- Silja 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 Silja have the most bearers?
- In Finland, the national register counted about 6.3 thousand people named Silja, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled silja.
- Where is Silja most common?
- Silja is densest in Finland, where the national register counts about 1 in 884 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Silja?
- In Finland, the national register counted 6,304 people named Silja, about 1 in 884 residents.
- How common is Silja compared with other names?
- In Finland, Silja is the 464th most common given name of 19,056 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Silja?
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/siljaThe 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, “Silja” — the 464th most common given name in Finland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.