Diya
Feminine · “lamp”
Diya is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 5,079 girls against 12 boys since 1880.
Diya is a lamp — the small clay oil lamp lit in rows at Diwali, whose name means a row of lights.
How old is the name Diya?
Diya first appears in US birth records in 1991 — 34 years ago. The typical Diya alive today was born around 2011, making them about 14 years old. About 5,000 people named Diya are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Diya most popular?
Diya peaked in 2004, reaching #873 nationally. Today it ranks #1710, 837 places below that high. See the whole 2004 chart.
Diya appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From dipa to Diya
The story of Diya
Diyas are lit in rows at Diwali, one of the most widely observed festivals in the world; the clay lamps are made fresh each year. Diya belongs to the wave of very short Indian girls' names that rose from the 2000s — Diya, Riya, Siya, Jiya. Indian emigration brought it to America, where it is in current use.
Meaning
lamp, light
From the Hindi diya, an earthen oil lamp, from the Sanskrit dipa, 'lamp'. Diwali is dipavali, 'a row of lamps', from the same word. A separate Arabic diya means 'light' or 'splendor'. Both are genuine and both feed the name. The Sanskrit is undisputed.
How the name formed
- dipa
- diya
- Diya
Related forms: दीया · ضياء · Diyah
Pronouncing Diya
DEE-yah
Two syllables, stress on the first. Hindi gives both vowels a full value with no reduction.
Nicknames for Diya
Moderate
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
- 1991
- Most girls named
- 2009309 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #873reached in 2004
- Change vs 2024
- −2.5%119 in 2025, from 122
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.
Diya in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- दीया in Hindi — transliteration
- ضياء in Arabic — related form
- Diyah in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, New Jersey.
Diyas among us
people named Diya are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 13,506 born in 2025 was named Diya
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Diya
- #1710
- Diya on the 2025 chart
- #807
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Diya went to 119 girls in 2025, but Dia is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 153, which makes it the 807th most-given girls’ name of the year — 903 places above the chart.
- Diya119
- Dia34
About 1 girl in 10,505 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 13,506 for Diya 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 Merrilee test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Diya's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Merrilee climbed just as high around 1942, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Merrilee's path sketches the road Diya is walking now.
Diya 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 Diya is headed
Diya 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.
Diya beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Diya in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The lamp meaning is concrete and the Diwali connection is immediate.
- Two genuine traditions, Indian and Arabic, arrive at the same sense of light.
- Four letters, two syllables, and never misheard.
- Riya, Jiya and Siya are all close enough to cause confusion.
- It is very short and can be swallowed by a long surname.
- The Arabic and Sanskrit routes are separate despite the shared meaning.
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What they receive
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Diya
Feminine · #1710 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Diyas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 5,000 people named Diya are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Diya?
- Diya is the most-used spelling in US records — 119 of the 153 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Dia.
- How popular is the name Diya in 2025?
- Diya ranks #1710 among US girl names in 2025, with 119 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Diya?
- About 1 in every 13,506 US girls born in 2025 was named Diya — 119 in all.
- Will my child share the name Diya with classmates?
- Diya will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Diya
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Azara#1710 · Marwa#1710 · Aleyah#1710 · Karoline#1710 · Evaluna#1710 · Isa#1710 · Aulani#1710 · Azura#1710
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Diya? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Diya and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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