Soraya
Soraya reached its high-water mark in 2025 at number 862, and has been recorded 6,811 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 862nd. About 6,700 Sorayas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 15.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Soraya
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 6,811
- Estimated living today
- 6,700
- Median age today
- 15
- Peak year
- 2025
- Best rank
- 862nd
- Rank in 2025
- 862nd
- First recorded
- 1955
How old the living Sorayas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 6,811 babies given the name since 1955, about 6,700 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 3,800 of them are children and 70 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2010 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 Persian
Borrowed from fa-ira ثریا, from fa-cls ثریا (“brilliant gem; Pleiades”), ultimately from Arabic ثُرَيَّا.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Sorayas
- Soraya Esfandiari-Bakhtiari (1932–2001)Queen consort of Iran from 1951 to 1958
- Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría (born 1971)Spanish politician
- Soraya Arnelas (born 1982)Spanish singer, songwriter, actress and model
- Soraya Tarzi (1899–1968)Princess Consort (1919-1926), later Queen Consort of King Amanullah Khan of Afghanistan
- Soraya Haddad (born 1984)Algerian judoka
- Soraya Jiménez (1977–2013)Mexican weightlifter
- Soraya Post (born 1956)former Swedish MEP
- Soraya (1969–2006)Colombian-American singer-songwriter
People named Soraya with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Soraya is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Soraya is most concentrated in Florida (3.2×), California (2.7×), New York (2.3×), Arizona (2.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2025
The most popular girls’ names the year Soraya peaked:
Soraya elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Soraya | 10,915 | 168th |
| Italy girls | Soraya | 1,968 | — |
| Switzerland girls | Soraya | 1,419 | 89th |
| Belgium girls | Soraya | 1,416 | 148th |
| England and Wales girls | Soraya | 1,368 | 526th |
| Spain girls | Soraya | 377 | 99th |
| Poland girls | Soraya | 39 birth registrations | 391st |
| Ireland girls | Soraya | 24 | 582nd |
| Scotland girls | Soraya | 18 | 411th |
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.
Soraya: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Soraya | 1,035 | 0.083% | 76th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Soraya | 319 | 0.073% | 82nd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Soraya | 64 | 0.098% | 69th |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Soraya | 1 | 0.027% | 15th |
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, Soraya is most concentrated in Neuchâtel, where 0.12% of children were given it – 42 of them.
Soraya: rank by region
In 2025, Soraya was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Soraya | 484 | 10 |
| Wallonia | Soraya | 399 | 6 |
In 2024, Soraya was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Soraya | 7 | 2 |
In 2023, Soraya was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Soraya | 254 | 2 |
In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Soraya appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (204th).
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.
Soraya by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 18 | 339th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Soraya 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 | Soraya | 2,609 | 3,716 |
| Finland girls | Soraya | 72 | 108 |
| the Netherlands boys | Soraya | — | 5 |
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 Soraya lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 18,167 women called Soraya 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 | Soraya | 217 | 5.012 | 28 |
| Palencia | Soraya | 147 | 1.840 | 115 |
| Ávila | Soraya | 135 | 1.688 | 127 |
| Ceuta | Soraya | 69 | 1.666 | 135 |
| Valladolid | Soraya | 425 | 1.567 | 135 |
| Zamora | Soraya | 123 | 1.472 | 142 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Soraya 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.