Sonia

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: A female given name from Russian (the usual UK spelling of the name which is spelled Sonya in the US)

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

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

Sonia is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the 87th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • SVEl Salvador≈1 in 205(inferred from the name graph)
  • PTPortugal≈1 in 399
  • PEPeru≈1 in 411

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 Sonia 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.

Brazil (measured from records)

323,710 people, 2022

#216 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

8 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
524 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 205 (inferred from the name graph)

El Salvador, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

SoniaLatin(measured from records)
СоняCyrillic(measured from records)
סוניהHebrew(measured from records)
โศรยาThai(measured from records)
ΣονιαGreek(measured from records)
შონიაGeorgian(measured from records)
소니아Hangul(measured from records)
সোরাযারBengali(measured from records)

4 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Sonja in DE Germany, AT Austria and Soraya in FR France, EC Ecuador.

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)

Slavic diminutive of Sophia, from Greek sophia, 'wisdom'

Sources 1

  • Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.

How Sonia is read(measured from records)

Sonia 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.

  • Spanish41%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Sonia in Spanish.

  • English21%

    A female given name from Russian (the usual UK spelling of the name which is spelled Sonya in the US).

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

  • Portuguese15%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Sonia in Portuguese.

  • French7.9%

    Slavic diminutive of Sophia, from Greek sophia, 'wisdom'

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

    Forme slave de Sophie, d’origine grecque, signifiant « sagesse ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

    Diminutif slave de Sophia; « sagesse ».

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

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)

Sonia 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 Sonia is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil#87323,7101 in 654355KSonia196
DE Germany#128≈110,000 est.≈1 in 700—Sonja246
US United States#228113,7261 in 2.9K114KSonia524
ES Spain#3698,0761 in 51098KSonia254
FR France#714≈87,000 est.≈1 in 77684KSoraya286
PE Peru#80≈78,000 est.≈1 in 411—Sonia83
EC Ecuador#31936,4601 in 46436KSoraya61
SV El Salvador#76≈32,000 est.≈1 in 205—Sonia57
PT Portugal#51≈26,000 est.≈1 in 399listedSonia158
AT Austria#64≈22,000 est.≈1 in 4084.7KSonja143

323,710 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. 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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); INEC — civil registry names; the pt-irn-lista-nomes register; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024). 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)

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

  • Hindi given name85 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Pakistan, United States, Bangladesh

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Bangla

    Also written Sania, Sniya, সোনিয়া, সনিয়া, সুনিয়া

  • French given name41 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Canada, Belgium

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Sónia, Sônia, Sònia, So'Nia, Sonià

  • a separate name7 spellings in the group

    Also written Soni︠a︡, Sôniá, Sònia, Sónia, Sonía

  • Indonesian given name10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, India, Malaysia, United States

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written 'Sonia, Sonia', Sònia, Sônia, Sónia

  • Lao given name25 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, United States, Thailand, Chile

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written โซเนีย, Sônia, Soney, Sònia, Sonla

78 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)

Sonia 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 Russian, Russian hypocoristic of Sofía.

    as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios

  • In Russian, 23 juin (6 juillet), 17 (30) septembre, 18 septembre (1 octobre). Sophie est son équivalent français. Fête : 25 mai.

    as a nameRussian Names

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)

1850190019502000Sonia Delaunay-Terk, b. 1885Sonia Orwell, b. 1918Sonia Rykiel, b. 1930Sonia Gandhi, b. 1946Sonia Braga, b. 1950Sonia Sotomayor, b. 1954Viktor Lazlo, b. 1960Sonya Walger, b. 1974Sonia Rolland, b. 1981Sonia Ben Ammar, b. 1999

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)

InformalHola Sonia,Hi Sonia, (English)

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 135 sources across 73 countries.

Official registers attesting Sonia
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—355K#126
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022324K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—323K#84
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020114K#494
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—98K#101
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—98K#50
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)202484K#907
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202436K#49
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—1.2K#84
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)2020311—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020173#494
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025171—

Reference works 5

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

Where does the name Sonia come from?
Slavic diminutive of Sophia, from Greek sophia, 'wisdom' Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
How do you pronounce Sonia?
A machine transcription gives /sonja/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What are other forms of the name Sonia?
In the etymology graph, Sofia, Sophie and Sophia are forms of the same name in other languages.
What does the name Sonia mean?
In English, A female given name from Russian (the usual UK spelling of the name which is spelled Sonya in the US).
In which country does Sonia have the most bearers?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 324 thousand people named Sonia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sonia.
Is Sonia a male or female name?
Sonia 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.
How common is the name Sonia?
In Brazil, the national register counted 323,710 people named Sonia in 2022, about 1 in 654 residents.
How common is Sonia compared with other names?
In Brazil, Sonia is the 87th most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Sonia?

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

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, “Sonia” — the 87th most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Sonia parses inside a full name →