Sophia

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Sophia boys named Sophia

By the numbers

Total US births

439,619

Estimated living today

418,000

Median age today

13

Peak year

2012

Best rank

1st

Rank in 2025

5th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

439,108 / 511

How old the living Sophias are

born that year still alive today

Of the 439,619 babies given the name since 1880, about 418,000 are alive — 95 in every hundred. Roughly 287,000 of them are children and 2,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2012 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 Ancient Greek

Chiefly from Latin Sophia, from Ancient Greek Σοφία, from σοφία (“wisdom”), especially in reference to holy or divine wisdom under the influence of Biblical Hebrew חוכמה, to the early martyr St. Sophia, and to many figures of European royalty and nobility. Also used as a calque for the many cognate forms, such as Italian Sofia, Ukrainian Софі́я, Russian Софи́я, Polish Zofia, etc.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Sophias

• Sophia Loren (born 1934)Italian actress
• Sophia Bush (born 1982)American actress
• Sophia Alekseyevna of Russia (1657–1704)Russian tsarevna
• Sophia of Hanover (1630–1714)Princess of the Palatinate, Electress of Hanover, heir presumptive and ancestor of British monarchs following the Act of Settlement 1701
• Sophia of Prussia (1870–1932)Queen consort of Greece
• Sophia Lillis (born 2002)American actress
• Sophia of Nassau (1836–1913)Swedish queen
• Sophia Dorothea of Hanover (1687–1757)Prussian royal consort of Frederick William I

People named Sophia with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Sophia is most common

• CA68,272
• TX40,939
• NY30,896
• FL27,757
• IL18,483
• PA17,833
• OH15,530
• NJ13,823
• MI12,637
• MA11,191

Relative to how many babies each state records, Sophia is most concentrated in Nevada (2.6×), Arizona (1.9×), Florida (1.9×), California (1.6×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2012

The most popular girls’ names the year Sophia peaked:

• Sophia
• Emma
• Isabella
• Olivia
• Ava
• Emily

All the names of 2012

Sophia elsewhere

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.

Sophia: births by region

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, Sophia is most concentrated in Zug, where 0.45% of children were given it – 123 of them.

Sophia: rank by region

In 2025, Sophia was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.

In 2024, Sophia was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Sophia was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Sophia appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (37th), Province of Antwerp (38th), Province of Limburg (41st), Province of Walloon Brabant (42nd), Province of Luxembourg (46th), Province of Hainaut (48th), Province of East Flanders (60th), Province of Liège (70th), Province of Flemish Brabant (86th) and Province of West Flanders (86th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.

Sophia by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Sophia 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.

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 Sophia lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 2,064 women called Sophia 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

Listed in 43 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 9 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

• Sophie
• Sophronia
• Sophya
• Sophi
• Sophy

Sophia against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Sophia vs Sofia
• Sophia vs Sophie
• Sophia vs Sophronia
• Sophia vs Sophya
• Sophia vs Sophi
• Sophia vs Sophy

Compare Sophia with a name of your own