Silja
given name · Finnish · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Silja is a given name, with more bearers in Finland than in any other country. It appears chiefly in Finnish and German, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: weibl. Vom., friesische, schwedische und finnische Kurzform von Cädlia (.
- FIFinland1 in 884◐
- ISIceland1 in 1.1K
- EEEstonia1 in 4.3K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈8.9K ●
- Sources
- 52 ●
- 1 in 884 ◐
across 10 countries
1.3K records
Official registry-verified
Finland
Meaning & origin●
weibl. Vom., friesische, schwedische und finnische Kurzform von Cädlia (
Sources 1
- DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Finland | #449 | 6,304△ | 544 rec. | 1 in 884 | 8.2K | Silja | 45 |
| DK Denmark | — | 1,276 | — | 1 in 4.6K | 1.3K | — | — |
| EE Estonia | #410 | 986 | 168 rec. | — | 657 | Silja | 25 |
| NO Norway | — | 612△ | 28 rec. | 1 in 8.9K | 2.1K | Silja | 12 |
| SE Sweden | — | 331△ | 65 rec. | 1 in 31K | 331 | Silja | 16 |
| IS Iceland | — | 318 | — | 1 in 1.1K | 318 | — | — |
| US United States | — | 227 | 187 rec. | — | 6 | Silja | 52 |
| IN India | — | 97 | 92 rec. | — | 13 | Silja | 6 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 64△ | 8 rec. | 1 in 270K | 64 | Silja | 3 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 35 | 13 rec. | — | — | Silja | 7 |
| MX Mexico | — | 22 | 15 rec. | — | — | Silja | 11 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 21 | 18 rec. | — | — | Silja | 12 |
Roughly 6.3K people in Finland bear this name (about 1 in 884). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Finnish32K68%
- German3.8K8%
- Danish3.8K8%
- Norwegian Bokmål2.1K4%
- English9962%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Finnish | 31,996 | 68% |
| German | 3,844 | 8% |
| Danish | 3,790 | 8% |
| Norwegian Bokmål | 2,078 | 4% |
| English | 996 | 2% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Silja 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 Swedish, Silja är en främst finsk form av → Cecilia medan Silje är en norsk form av samma namn. Den norska formen har blivit populär de senaste åren. I den finlandssvenska almanackan 22 november.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Finnish (used also in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden): vernacular form of Cecilia (see CECILY ). The name was made famous by the novel The Maid Silja (1931) by Frans Eemil Sillanpää, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.
as a word
In Estonian, a female given name, equivalent to English Cecilia
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1967 | 6 |
| 1969 | 5 |
| 1970 | 4 |
| 1971 | 10 |
| 1972 | 8 |
| 1973 | 16 |
| 1974 | 11 |
| 1975 | 20 |
| 1976 | 29 |
| 1977 | 16 |
| 1978 | 16 |
| 1979 | 14 |
| 1980 | 10 |
| 1981 | 5 |
| 1982 | 11 |
| 1983 | 7 |
| 1984 | 7 |
| 1985 | 4 |
| 1987 | 4 |
| 1988 | 8 |
| 1990 | 6 |
| 1991 | 9 |
| 1992 | 8 |
| 1993 | 7 |
| 1994 | 8 |
| 1995 | 6 |
| 1996 | 7 |
| 1998 | 7 |
| 1999 | 12 |
| 2000 | 8 |
| 2001 | 7 |
| 2002 | 13 |
| 2003 | 12 |
| 2004 | 16 |
| 2005 | 12 |
| 2006 | 17 |
| 2007 | 16 |
| 2008 | 19 |
| 2009 | 23 |
| 2010 | 16 |
| 2011 | 25 |
| 2012 | 17 |
| 2013 | 14 |
| 2014 | 24 |
| 2015 | 12 |
| 2016 | 17 |
| 2017 | 15 |
| 2018 | 8 |
| 2019 | 8 |
| 2020 | 4 |
| 2022 | 6 |
| 2025 | 4 |
NO SSB — Navn (1880–present) — 52 years between 1967–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Silja Walterb. 1919CHSwiss Benedictine nun, novelist and poet (1919–2011)
- Anja Siljab. 1940DEGerman soprano (born 1940)
- Silja Rantanenb. 1955FIFinnish painter (born 1955)
- Silja Dögg Gunnarsdóttirb. 1973ISIcelandic politician
- Silja Clemensb. 1975DEGerman cinematographer and screenwriter
- Silja Hauksdóttirb. 1976ISIcelandic writer
- Silja Lehtinenb. 1985FIFinnish sailor
- Silja Kanervab. 1985USFinnish yacht racer
- Silja Goroškob. 1994EEEstonian association football player (born 1994)
- Silja Kosonenb. 2002FIFinnish hammer thrower
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).
Evidence●
Attested in 34 sources across 19 countries.
Reference works 2
- 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 2026-09-12 data build · 246 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Silja?
- We estimate roughly 8.9 thousand people bear Silja (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
- In which country does Silja have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 6.3 thousand people bear Silja in Finland, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled silja.
- Where is Silja most common?
- Silja is densest in Finland, where the national register counts about 1 in 884 people carrying it.
- How common is Silja compared with other names?
- In Finland, Silja is the 449th most common given name of 51,554 given names recorded there.
- Is Silja a male or female name?
- Silja 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 Silja mean?
- Recorded meaning: weibl. Vom., friesische, schwedische und finnische Kurzform von Cädlia (
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/siljaThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Silja” — the 449th most common given name in Finland. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.