Silvà
surname · Latin script
Silvà is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Angola than in any other country, where it is the most common surname. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Latin silva. Doublet of selva.
- PTPortugal≈1 in 23(inferred from the name graph)
- AOAngola≈1 in 61
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 170
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 Silvà itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Angola (inferred from the name graph)
- #8 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 518 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 23 (inferred from the name graph)
≈620,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Portugal, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Silva in MX Mexico, US United States, CL Chile and 4 more.
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)Borrowed from Latin silva. Doublet of selva.
Cited for this meaning 10
- Dizionario dei cognomi italiani
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
- Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Dictionary of Lithuanian Surnames)
- Wiktionary
Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Silvà 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AO Angola | #1 | ≈620,000 est. | ≈1 in 61 | — | Silva | 96 |
| PT Portugal | #1 | ≈470,000 est. | ≈1 in 23 | — | Silva | 281 |
| MX Mexico | #53 | ≈310,000 est. | ≈1 in 421 | 6K | Silva | 257 |
| VE Venezuela | #24 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 173 | — | Silva | 137 |
| US United States | #308 | 161,633 | 1 in 2.1K | 163K | Silva | 518 |
| CL Chile | #5 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 184 | — | Silva | 184 |
| PY Paraguay | #40 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 233 | — | Silva | 69 |
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: RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset); 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).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Silvà mean, and where does it come from?
- Borrowed from Latin silva. Doublet of selva. Recorded by Dizionario dei cognomi italiani and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 8 other sources.
- In which country does Silvà have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 621 thousand people named Silvà in Angola, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled silva.
- How common is the name Silvà?
- In the United States, the national register counted 161,633 people named Silvà in 2010, about 1 in 2.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Silvà compared with other names?
- In Angola, Silvà is the most common surname of 23,432 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Silvà?
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/silv%C3%A0The 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, “Silvà” — the most common surname in Angola. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.