Sonya
Sonya reached its high-water mark in 1967 at number 114, and has been recorded 65,954 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 1,927th. About 59,000 Sonyas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 54.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Sonya boys named Sonya
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 65,954
- Estimated living today
- 59,000
- Median age today
- 54
- Peak year
- 1967
- Best rank
- 114th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,927th
- First recorded
- 1905
- Girls / boys
- 65,772 / 182
How old the living Sonyas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 65,954 babies given the name since 1905, about 59,000 are alive — 89 in every hundred. Roughly 2,600 of them are children and 5,500 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1971 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Russian
Borrowed from ru, uk Со́ня, an informal pet form of Со́фья, Софі́я or Софи́я (“Sofia, Sophia”), from the Ancient Greek σοφία (“wisdom”). It was introduced into English through 19th century Russian literature and taken into general use in early twentieth century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Sonyas
- Sonya Walger (born 1974)British-American actress
- Sonya Yoncheva (born 1981)Bulgarian opera singer
- Sonya Smith (born 1972)Venezuelan actress
- Sonya Eddy (1967–2022)American actress
- Sonya Jehan (born 1980)Pakistani actress
- Sonya Levien (1888–1960)American screenwriter
- Sonya Hartnett (born 1968)Australian writer
- Sonya Noskowiak (1900–1975)American photographer
People named Sonya with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Sonya is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Sonya is most concentrated in Alabama (2.3×), South Carolina (2.0×), New Mexico (1.9×), Georgia (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1967
The most popular girls’ names the year Sonya peaked:
Sonya elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland girls | Sonya | 918 | 80th |
| France girls | Sonya | 895 | 971st |
| New Zealand girls | Sonya | 632 | 77th |
| England and Wales girls | Sonya | 308 | 753rd |
| Scotland girls | Sonya | 188 | 163rd |
| Belgium girls | Sonya | 27 | 1,015th |
| Switzerland girls | Sonya | 20 | 975th |
| Poland girls | Sonya | 15 birth registrations | 531st |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Sonya: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Sonya | 14 | 0.001% | 864th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Sonya | 5 | 0.001% | 584th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Sonya | 1 | 0.002% | 181st |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
Sonya among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Sonya | 105 | 122 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Sonya lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 199 women called Sonya were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Segovia | Sonya | 8 | 0.101 | 766 |
| Burgos | Sonya | 6 | 0.033 | 1,473 |
| Navarra | Sonya | 7 | 0.020 | 2,332 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Sonya | 18 | 0.018 | 2,725 |
| Girona | Sonya | 6 | 0.014 | 2,861 |
| Valencia/València | Sonya | 19 | 0.013 | 2,798 |
Listed in 11 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 41 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Sonya against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.