Sonja

given name · English · Latin script

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

Sonja is a given name, most frequently recorded in Russia, where it is the 17th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and German, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: ) Sonia; Sonya: weibl.

rarermore common
  • UAUkraine1 in 41◐
  • GRGreece1 in 48
  • RURussia1 in 68

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈1.5M ●

across 11 countries

#13 ●

of 16M given names

9 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
489 ●

22M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 106 ◐

Poland

Spellings & scripts●

ВалентинаCyrillic · Russian●14M records
SoniaLatin · Portuguese●6.4M records
ΣοφιαGreek · Greek●236K records
סופיהHebrew · Hebrew●109K records
ᲨონიაGeorgian · Georgian●11K records
โซเฟียThai · Thai●3.3K records
소피아Hangul · Korean●45 records
ՍոֆիաArmenian · Armenian●17 records
সোরাযারBengali · Bangla●0 records

12 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Sonia in BR Brazil, US United States, ES Spain and 5 more, Sofia in AR Argentina, MX Mexico, GR Greece and 4 more, Валентина in RU Russia, UA Ukraine, KZ Kazakhstan and Valentina in CL Chile, CO Colombia.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

recorded in German

) Sonia; Sonya: weibl. Vom., russische Koseform von

Sources 1

  • DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Sonja is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
RU Russia#1715,109,6693.3M rec.—#2Валентина184
UA Ukraine#117,630,0867.6M rec.—listedВалентина85
AR Argentina#224,025,5301.8M rec.—75KSofia162
MX Mexico#60950,721584K rec.—1.6KSofia228
GR Greece#11720,3879.9K rec.—230KSofia157
PE Peru#40641,673456K rec.—#6Sonia92
CL Chile#18631,45152K rec.—2.3KValentina156
BD Bangladesh#50481,603784 rec.——Sonia39
IN India#928407,101249K rec.—315Soniya167
VE Venezuela#52406,751182K rec.—2.8KSonia99
CO Colombia#18401,325151K rec.—602Valentina174
IT Italy#9398,585196K rec.—4.6KSofia224

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English424K41%
  • German263K25%
  • Finnish44K4%
  • Croatian41K4%
  • Danish29K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English423,99141%
German262,81425%
Finnish43,9954%
Croatian41,0834%
Danish28,8303%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Sonja is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name41K records spelled Sonja6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, Spain, Colombia

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Sônja, Soñja

  • French given name12K records spelled Sonja3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, Spain

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Sonjà

68 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●

Sonja 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 Swedish, Sonja (m.fl. former) är ursprungligen en rysk smekform till → Sofia. Namnet kom till Sverige via Finland. I både den rikssvenska och finlandssvenska almanackan 15 maj.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In Danish, a female given name from Russian Со́ня (Sónja), a pet form of Sophia, cognate to English Sonya

    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.

Over time●

05001K1.5K1920194019601980200020201.3K · 1968

Show as table
Sonja in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1906–2025
Yearrecords
19066
19138
191413
191511
191615
191716
191817
19199
192011
192122
192221
192323
192420
192518
192625
192725
192829
192937
193071
193151
193270
193354
193486
193592
1936180
1937560
19381,117
1939862
1940713
1941567
1942600
1943525
1944405
1945455
1946484
1947496
1948424
1949412
1950345
1951397
1952389
1953413
1954426
1955445
1956471
1957531
1958524
1959678
1960758
1961867
1962857
1963995
19641,051
19651,125
19661,321
19671,335
19681,339
19691,314
19701,310
19711,188
19721,191
1973884
1974754
1975615
1976583
1977518
1978481
1979438
1980397
1981401
1982372
1983314
1984266
1985303
1986318
1987303
1988294
1989272
1990237
1991206
1992196
1993169
1994169
1995121
1996141
1997151
1998159
1999146
2000123
2001106
2002110
2003114
2004133
2005127
2006128
2007105
2008120
2009121
2010110
2011108
2012114
2013110
2014110
201586
201692
201769
201877
201980
202076
202168
202240
202365
202456
202537

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 114 years between 1906–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1850190019502000Sonia Delaunay-Terk, b. 1885Sonja Henie, b. 1912Sonia Orwell, b. 1918Sonja Haraldsen, b. 1937Sonia Gandhi, b. 1946Sonia Braga, b. 1950Sonia Sotomayor, b. 1954Sonja Ball, b. 1956Sonja Sohn, b. 1964Sonia Ben Ammar, b. 1999
  • Sonia Delaunay-Terkb. 1885FRnot in their usual nameFrench painter (1885–1979)
  • Sonja Henieb. 1912NONorwegian figure skater and actress (1912–1969)
  • Sonia Orwellb. 1918GBnot in their usual namewife of George Orwell (1918–1980)
  • Sonja Haraldsenb. 1937NOQueen of Norway since 1991
  • Sonia Gandhib. 1946ITnot in their usual nameIndian politician
  • Sonia Bragab. 1950BRnot in their usual nameBrazilian-American actress
  • Sonia Sotomayorb. 1954USnot in their usual nameUS Supreme Court justice since 2009
  • Sonja Ballb. 1956CACanadian actress
  • Sonja Sohnb. 1964USAmerican actress, activist (b. 1964)
  • Sonia Ben Ammarb. 1999FRnot in their usual nameFrench model, actress and singer

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 79 sources across 41 countries.

Official registers attesting Sonja
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202034K#1,161
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—19K#223
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—15K#315
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)202012K—
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—11K#353
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—10K#425
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—8.9K—
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names20257.6K#23
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—7.5K#55
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—6.6K#103
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)20215.5K#192
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021)20214.9K—

Reference works 3

  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • 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 · 866 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Sonja?
We estimate roughly 1.5 million people bear Sonja (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Sonja have the most bearers?
Sonja is most frequently recorded in Russia, where it is most often spelled валентина.
How common is Sonja compared with other names?
In Russia, Sonja is the 17th most common given name of 418,751 given names recorded there.
Is Sonja a male or female name?
Sonja 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 Sonja mean?
Recorded meaning: ) Sonia; Sonya: weibl.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/sonja

The 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

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

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, “Sonja” — the 17th most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Sonja parses inside a full name →