Amaya
Feminine · “Either "the end" in Basque”
Amaya is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 43,525 girls against 22 boys since 1880.
Amaya is a hilltop fortress in northern Castile, a Basque given name, and a Japanese surname — three separate roads that arrive at the same four-vowel spelling. In English it lands as three unhurried syllables with the weight in the middle, close enough to Maya and Amelia that few people need to hear it twice. As a first name in America it is recent; as a word it is very old.
How old is the name Amaya?
Amaya first appears in US birth records in 1972 — 53 years ago. The typical Amaya is a kid of about 11 — this name's wave is very recent. About 43,000 people named Amaya are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Amaya most popular?
Amaya peaked in 2018, reaching #129 nationally. Today it ranks #180, 51 places below that high. See the whole 2018 chart.
Amaya appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Amaya (hill and stronghold, Burgos) to Amaya
The story of Amaya
Peña Amaya, a high rocky outcrop in northern Burgos, was a Cantabrian stronghold before Rome took the region, and later a seat under the Visigoths; the surname Amaya spread from that place through Castile and, in time, across the Spanish-speaking world. The name's life as a girl's given name owes much to the Basque Country, where Amaia became current after the nineteenth-century Spanish novelist Francisco Navarro Villoslada published his historical novel Amaya, set in the eighth century. The spelling with a y is the Castilian one, and it is the form that traveled to the United States, where it began appearing as a first name only in the last half-century. Along the way it also met a Japanese surname with the same romanization — a coincidence of spelling rather than a shared root.
Meaningscholars disagree
Either "the end" in Basque, or the Castilian place name Amaya
Two serious readings compete. In Basque, amaia means "the end," and Amaia is a well-established given name there. Separately, Amaya is the name of Peña Amaya, a hill and ancient stronghold in the province of Burgos, whose own name is pre-Roman and has never been convincingly translated. A Japanese surname romanized as Amaya also exists, written with several different character combinations, so no single meaning attaches to it either.
How the name formed
- Amayahill and stronghold, Burgos
- AmayaCastilian surname
- AmaiaBasque given name
- Amayagiven name
Related forms: Amaia · Amaya · Amayah · Amaya
Pronouncing Amaya
uh-MY-uh
That is the usual American reading. In Spanish and Basque it is ah-MAH-ya, with a fuller first vowel and the y as in "yes." Both are correct for their setting, and bilingual families often use each in its own language.
Nicknames for Amaya
High
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1972
- Most girls named
- 20182,280 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #129reached in 2018
- Change vs 2024
- −5.2%1,723 in 2025, from 1,817
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Amaya in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Amaia in Basque — same name
- Amaya in Spanish — same name
- Amayah in English — spelling variant
- Amaya in Japanese — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Amayas among us
people named Amaya are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 933 born in 2025 was named Amaya
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Amaya
- #180
- Amaya on the 2025 chart
- #105
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Amaya went to 1,723 girls in 2025, but Amaia, Amayah and Amaiah and the rest below are the same name said out loud. Together the 8 spellings went to 2,743, which makes it the 105th most-given girls’ name of the year — 75 places above the chart.
and 2 rarer spellings.
About 1 girl in 586 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 933 for Amaya itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Kellie test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Amaya's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Kellie climbed just as high around 1969, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Kellie's path sketches the road Amaya is walking now.
Amaya sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Amaya is headed
Amaya should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Amaya beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Amaya in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Reads correctly on sight for most English speakers — no silent letters, no ambiguous consonants.
- Works in both English and Spanish without changing spelling, which matters in bilingual households.
- Comes with ready-made short forms, Maya above all, so a child has options without inventing one.
- The word behind it is documented for centuries as a place and a surname, long before anyone used it as a first name.
- Two pronunciations coexist: uh-MY-uh in most English-speaking settings, ah-MAH-ya in Spanish and Basque. Families that speak both will hear their child's name said two ways, which is manageable but worth deciding on early.
- It sits in a crowded spelling neighborhood — Amaia, Amayah, Amiyah, Amara, Amira — so expect to spell it aloud fairly often, even to people who already know how to say it.
- The best-known Basque reading is "the end," which some relatives will find striking and some will ask about. The Castilian place-name origin is the other honest answer.
- As a first name in the US it belongs almost entirely to younger generations, so it will read as contemporary rather than inherited — and a child is unlikely to share it with a classmate.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Amaya
Feminine · #180 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Amayas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 43,000 people named Amaya are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Amaya?
- Amaya is the most-used spelling in US records — 1,723 of the 2,743 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Amaia, Amayah, Amaiah, Amaiyah and Amaiya.
- How popular is the name Amaya in 2025?
- Amaya ranks #180 among US girl names in 2025, with 1,723 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Amaya?
- About 1 in every 933 US girls born in 2025 was named Amaya — 1,723 in all.
- Will my child share the name Amaya with classmates?
- Amaya will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Amaya
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lilah#179 · Sutton#181 · Annie#182 · Daphne#178 · Ximena#183 · Isabel#176 · Adalynn#184 · Freya#176
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Amaya? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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