Aya
Aya is a girl's name that peaked in 2024, when it was the 630th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 644th. About 7,900 Ayas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 10.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Aya
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 7,987
- Estimated living today
- 7,900
- Median age today
- 10
- Peak year
- 2024
- Best rank
- 630th
- Rank in 2025
- 644th
- First recorded
- 1972
How old the living Ayas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 7,987 babies given the name since 1972, about 7,900 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 5,800 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2015 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 Japanese
Borrowed from Japanese あや.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Ayas
- Aya Miyama (born 1985)Japanese association football player
- Aya Nakamura (born 1995)Malian-French singer
- Aya Sameshima (born 1987)Japanese association football player
- Aya Shimokozuru (born 1982)Japanese association football player
- Aya Ueto (born 1985)Japanese actress, singer, model, tarento, and occasional radio personality
- Aya Matsuura (born 1986)Japanese female singer, talent, television presenter and former idol
- Aya Hisakawa (born 1968)Japanese voice actress and singer
- Aya Hirano (born 1987)Japanese voice actress and singer
People named Aya with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Aya is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Aya is most concentrated in Michigan (2.8×), Virginia (2.3×), Florida (1.8×), California (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2024
The most popular girls’ names the year Aya peaked:
Aya elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Aya +1 spelling | 20,930 | 46th |
| Spain girls | Aya | 7,256 | 61st |
| Italy girls | Aya | 4,494 | — |
| Belgium girls | Aya | 3,817 | 41st |
| England and Wales girls | Aya | 2,813 | 221st |
| Denmark girls | Aya | 2,792 | 22nd |
| Norway girls | Aya | 588 | 153rd |
| Switzerland girls | Aya | 531 | 147th |
| Ireland girls | Aya | 128 | 320th |
| Poland girls | Aya | 125 birth registrations | 320th |
| Scotland girls | Aya | 79 | 376th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Aya | 6 | 391st |
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.
Aya: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Aya | 237 | 0.019% | 177th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Aya | 294 | 0.068% | 60th |
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.
By canton, Aya is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.12% of children were given it – 122 of them.
Aya: rank by region
In 2025, Aya was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Aya | 71 | 71 |
| Wallonia | Aya | 105 | 24 |
| Brussels | Aya | 4 | 50 |
In 2018, Aya was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Spain.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Melilla | Aya | 6 | 11 |
In 2016, Aya was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Aya | 10 | 1 |
In 2025, Aya was given 2 times or more in 2 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Aya | 190 | 3 |
| Małopolskie | Aya | 194 | 3 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Aya appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (4th), Province of Antwerp (29th), Province of Hainaut (64th), Province of Flemish Brabant (73rd), Province of Liège (91st), Province of West Flanders (103rd), Province of Limburg (117th) and Province of East Flanders (123rd).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Aya by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 54 | 181st |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Aya 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Aya | 2,026 | 2,137 |
| Finland girls | Aya | 145 | 169 |
| the Netherlands boys | Aya | 5 | 8 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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 Aya lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 11,450 women called Aya 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Melilla | Aya | 134 | 3.095 | 64 |
| Almería | Aya | 679 | 1.800 | 91 |
| Ceuta | Aya | 63 | 1.521 | 146 |
| Murcia | Aya | 1,137 | 1.435 | 122 |
| Girona | Aya | 517 | 1.249 | 130 |
| Tarragona | Aya | 520 | 1.189 | 142 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Aya 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.