Selva

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in Spanish: forest or jungle, wood, chiefly a rainforest

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

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

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

rarermore common
  • UYUruguay1 in 1.7K(measured from records)
  • PYParaguay≈1 in 2.3K
  • SYSyria≈1 in 2.5K

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.

Argentina (inferred from the name graph)

≈13,000 people, est.

Sources
142 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 1.7K (inferred from the name graph)

Uruguay

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

forest or jungle, wood, chiefly a rainforest

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Selva is read(measured from records)

Selva 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.

  • Spanish52%

    forest or jungle, wood, chiefly a rainforest

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

  • Turkish18%

    1. Bıldırcın eti. 2. Tih Çölünde bulundukları sürece İsrailoğullarına Allah tarafından kudret helvasıyla birlikte, karınlarını duyurmaları için gönderildiğine inanılan kuş.

    as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)

  • Hindi11%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Selva in Hindi.

  • Arabic7.0%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Selva in Arabic.

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Selva 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 Selva is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AR Argentina#523≈13,000 est.≈1 in 3.6K1.4KSelva63
SY Syria#599≈7,800 est.≈1 in 2.5K—Selva4
TR Türkiye—≈5,600 est.≈1 in 15K—Selva44
PY Paraguay#259≈3,200 est.≈1 in 2.3K—Selva25
MY Malaysia—≈2,700 est.≈1 in 12K—Selva18
UY Uruguay#1872,0381 in 1.7K2KSelva25

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); INE Uruguay — Nombres más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)

Selva is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Singapore, Malaysia, United States

    Also written Selvä, Sêlvã

  • English given name15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India, Malaysia, Singapore

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Şelva, Sèlvà, Sëlvâ, Sëlvã, Sèlva

  • French given name11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Syria, Türkiye, United States

    Also written Sēlvã, Sélvà, Sélvã, Śêĺvã, Sèlva

  • Italian given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, Italy, Paraguay, United States

    Also written Sélva

53 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)

Selva 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 Italian, oriundo de localidades chamadas Selva; do lat. silva ‘floresta’

    as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

  • In Portuguese, jungle

    as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese

  • In English, Heavily forested ground in the Amazon basin.

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

  • In Catalan, jungle, rainforest

    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)

19201940196019802000Selva Casal, b. 1927Selva Xtabay, b. 1930Selva Alemán, b. 1944Selva Erdener, b. 1966Selva Rasalingam, b. 1968Selva Almada, b. 1973Selva Mayo, b. 2000

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 Selva,Hi Selva, (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 63 sources across 28 countries.

Official registers attesting Selva
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—1.4K—
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—161—

Reference works 6

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary

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 Selva mean, and where does it come from?
forest or jungle, wood, chiefly a rainforest Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Selva?
A machine transcription gives /selba/ (IPA) for Spanish.
Is Selva a male or female name?
Selva 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 Selva have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 13 thousand people named Selva in Argentina, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled selva.
Where is Selva most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Selva is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 1.7 thousand people — even though Argentina holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Selva?
In Uruguay, the national register counted 2,038 people named Selva, about 1 in 1.7 thousand residents.
How common is Selva compared with other names?
In Argentina, Selva is the 523rd most common given name of 119,825 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Selva?

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

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, “Selva” — the 523rd most common given name in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Selva parses inside a full name →