Raija

given name · Latin script

Meaning: Raija är en karelsk form av ryskans Raja, Raissa, Raisja, som troligen återgår på grekiskans rádios ’lätt’

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

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

Raija is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Finland than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • FIFinland1 in 278(measured from records)
  • SESweden1 in 8.5K
  • LVLatvia1 in 470K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Finland (measured from records)

20,015 people

Sources
25 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 278 (inferred from the name graph)

Finland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

recorded in Swedish

Raija är en karelsk form av ryskans Raja, Raissa, Raisja, som troligen återgår på grekiskans rádios ’lätt’. Raija gavs åt många finska flickor födda under 1930–1950-talet. Andra flicknamn med samma struktur populära vid samma tid är → Maija och → Kaija.

Sources 1

  • Förnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Raija 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 Raija is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FI Finland#59920,0151 in 27829KRaija13
SE Sweden—1,2071 in 8.5K1.2KRaija5
US United States—1931 in 1.7M189Raija17
BR Brazil—321 in 6.6M32Raija15
NL Netherlands—91 in 1.9M9——
DK Denmark—51 in 1.2M5——
LV Latvia—41 in 470K4——

20,015 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); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Raija is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Raíja

34 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)

Raija 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 Latvian, Turcijā nemuhāmedāņu pavalstnieki

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • 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)

192019401960Raija Uosikkinen, b. 1923Raija Tuumi, b. 1923Raija Riikkala, b. 1926Leena Hämet-Ahti, b. 1931Raija Bartens, b. 1933Raija Lehmussaari, b. 1943Raya, b. 1947Raija Oranen, b. 1948Raija Siekkinen, b. 1953Raija Talvio, b. 1959

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)

InformalHei Raija,Hi Raija, (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 24 sources across 13 countries.

Official registers attesting Raija
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—29K#77
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—20K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)19991.4K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20001.4K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20011.4K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20021.4K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20031.4K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20041.4K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20051.3K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20061.3K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20071.3K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20081.3K—

Reference works 3

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 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

How do you pronounce Raija?
A machine transcription gives /rɑi̯jɑ/ (IPA) for Finnish.
Is Raija a male or female name?
Raija 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 Raija mean?
Recorded meaning: Raija är en karelsk form av ryskans Raja, Raissa, Raisja, som troligen återgår på grekiskans rádios ’lätt’.
In which country does Raija have the most bearers?
In Finland, the national register counted about 20 thousand people named Raija, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled raija.
Where is Raija most common?
Raija is densest in Finland, where the national register counts about 1 in 278 people carrying it.
How common is the name Raija?
In Finland, the national register counted 20,015 people named Raija, about 1 in 278 residents.
How common is Raija compared with other names?
In Finland, Raija is the 599th most common given name of 19,056 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Raija?

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

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, “Raija” — the 599th most common given name in Finland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Raija parses inside a full name →