Silva

surname · Latin script

Meaning: person who lives in a wood, from Old Spanish and Old Portuguese silva ‘wood’

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/silbɐ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Silva is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Portugal than in any other country, where it is the most common surname.

rarermore common
  • PTPortugal≈1 in 32(inferred from the name graph)
  • VEVenezuela≈1 in 173
  • CLChile≈1 in 191

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.

Portugal (inferred from the name graph)

≈330,000 people, est.

#8 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

5 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
518 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 32 (inferred from the name graph)

Portugal, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

SilvaLatin(measured from records)
СилваCyrillic(measured from records)
სილვაGeorgian(measured from records)
ΣιλβαGreek(measured from records)
실바Hangul(measured from records)

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)

person who lives in a wood, from Old Spanish and Old Portuguese silva ‘wood’

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Often considered alongside

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Silva, 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)

Silva 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.

Where Silva is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
PT Portugal#1≈330,000 est.≈1 in 32—Silva281
AO Angola#1≈170,000 est.≈1 in 191—Silva96
VE Venezuela#24≈170,000 est.≈1 in 173—Silva137
US United States#308161,6331 in 2.1K163KSilva518
AR Argentina#23154,9101 in 294155KSilva161
CL Chile#5≈95,000 est.≈1 in 191—Silva184
PY Paraguay#40≈29,000 est.≈1 in 244—Silva69

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); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Silva is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname98 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, Australia, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, German, Sinhala

    Also written Silva', Silvaa, Silvá, Sïlvä, Silvae

  • French surname56 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, United States, Portugal

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Silvà, Silvã, Sïlvã, Sìlva, Sîlvà

  • Indonesian surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Philippines, United States, Peru

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written 'Silva, Silvà, Sílvá, Silvã, Sïlvã

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Silvā, Silṿa, Sílva

  • Finnish surname19 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Finland, Peru, Spain

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Silvä, Sîlva, Sîlvã, Sïlvä, Silvá

103 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Silva is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Portuguese, bramble (any of various thorny shrubs, especially those in the family Rubus)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Spain; widespread Sephardic surname

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

  • Plg. rus. Сильва : Силъван (H. Петровский, 1966, c. 356). ♦SILVANAS Pbrd (of. Sylvari). Iš krikšto vardo, plg. brus. Силван, O Сыван, Силиван (M. Бирыла, 1966, c. 148), lenk. Sylwan (SSNO ^ V 266).

    as a nameLietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Dictionary of Lithuanian Surnames)

  • In Swedish, Silva är lika med latinets silva ’skog’ men det kan också vara en form av → Silvia, → Sylvia eller en kortform till → Silvana.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In Italian, do lat. silva, selva, mata, floresta; habitante dos bosques

    as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

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)

18001850190019502000Nicolás Avellaneda, b. 1837Marina Silva, b. 1958Ulisses Correia e Silva, b. 1962Gilberto Silva, b. 1976Thiago Silva, b. 1984David Silva, b. 1986Martín Cáceres, b. 1987Alex Sandro, b. 1991Silas Santos Silva, b. 1992Bernardo Silva, b. 1994

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)

FormalPrezado(a) Silva,Dear Silva, (English)
InformalPrezado(a) Silva,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 106 sources across 51 countries.

Official registers attesting Silva
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020163K#157
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010162K#163
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—155K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000126K#214

Reference works 10

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 Silva mean, and where does it come from?
person who lives in a wood, from Old Spanish and Old Portuguese silva ‘wood’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Silva?
A machine transcription gives /silbɐ/ (IPA) for Portuguese.
In which country does Silva have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 325 thousand people named Silva in Portugal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled silva.
How common is the name Silva?
In the United States, the national register counted 161,633 people named Silva in 2010, about 1 in 2.1 thousand residents.
How common is Silva compared with other names?
In Portugal, Silva is the most common surname of 45,564 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Silva?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/silva

The 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, “Silva” — the most common surname in Portugal. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Silva parses inside a full name →