Niva
given name · Latin script
Meaning: topographic name from niva ‘small rapids’, ‘river shallows’, or ‘ford’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɲivə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Niva is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country.
- BRBrazil1 in 226K(measured from records)
- ILIsrael≈1 in 17Kas ניבה
- BOBolivia≈1 in 197K
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 Niva 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)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 77 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 197K (inferred from the name graph)
938 people, 2022
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Bolivia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled ניבה in IL Israel and Nibha in AU Australia.
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)
topographic name from niva ‘small rapids’, ‘river shallows’, or ‘ford’. This name is found chiefly in northern Finland.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Niva 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | 938 | 1 in 226K | 1.1K | Niva | 45 |
| US United States | 582 | 1 in 572K | 572 | Niva | 72 |
| IL Israel | ≈500 est. | ≈1 in 17K | 510 | ניבה | 30 |
| PH Philippines | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 714K | — | Niva | 8 |
| AO Angola | ≈77 est. | ≈1 in 422K | — | Niva | 6 |
| AU Australia | ≈62 est. | ≈1 in 409K | 1 | Nibha | 16 |
| BO Bolivia | ≈59 est. | ≈1 in 197K | — | Niva | 4 |
| NL Netherlands | 49 | 1 in 353K | 49 | — | 2 |
938 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: CBS Israel — Names given to babies (1949–present); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present). 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)
Niva 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 Russian, Ivan Niva, executioner. 1558.
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
In Swedish, acronym of neurointensivvårdsavdelning (“neuro-ICU, neurointensive care unit”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In nlg, a species of sago palm smaller than _sao_ (the latter is not identified by [Fox 1955](Source#cldf:fox1955))
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Czech, a type of blue cheese, a Czech equivalent of Roquefort
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, A small rapid in a river.
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)
- Niva AntezanaPEPeruvian model and beauty pageant titleholder (born 2004) in Peru
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 51 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 196 | #93,513 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 196 | #88,083 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 189 | #101,718 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- How do you pronounce Niva?
- A machine transcription gives /ɲivə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- What does the name Niva mean?
- Recorded meaning: topographic name from niva ‘small rapids’, ‘river shallows’, or ‘ford’.
- Where does the name Niva come from?
- topographic name from niva ‘small rapids’, ‘river shallows’, or ‘ford’. This name is found chiefly in northern Finland. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- Is Niva a male or female name?
- Niva 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 Niva have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 938 people named Niva, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled niva.
- How common is the name Niva?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 938 people named Niva in 2022, about 1 in 226 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Niva?
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/nivaThe 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, “Niva”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.