Puja
Feminine · “an act of worship”
Puja is a word doing duty as a name. In Hindi and in Sanskrit before it, a puja is an act of worship: the offering of flowers, light, water and food before an image, performed daily in millions of households. It is one of the most ordinary words in Indian religious life and one of the warmest.
How old is the name Puja?
Puja first appears in US birth records in 1975 — 50 years ago. The typical Puja alive today was born around 1991, making them about 34 years old. About 800 people named Puja are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Puja most popular?
Puja peaked in 1984, reaching #2266 nationally. See the whole 1984 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Puja
Sanskrit is a well-documented language and its vocabulary is mostly its own, but not all of it. Scholars have long argued that puja is one of the words Sanskrit took in rather than inherited, borrowed from a Dravidian language of the south, with a root meaning something like to smear or to anoint. If that is right, then one of the central words of Sanskrit ritual was a loan from the people the Sanskrit-speakers found already living there. The argument is not closed. It belongs, though, to one of the great discoveries in the study of language, made when a judge sitting in Calcutta told a learned society that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin resembled each other too closely for chance, and that all three must have come from a common source now lost. He was right, and the whole idea of language families begins there.
Meaning
an act of worship, an offering
The sense is settled and current: the word is in daily use. Where the word itself came from is a separate and less settled question.
Pronouncing Puja
POO-jah
Two syllables, stress in front, the oo long. Pooja is the same name written to keep English readers from shortening the vowel.
Nicknames for Puja
Limited
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
- 1975
- Most girls named
- 198844 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2266reached in 1984
- Change vs 2013
- +16.7%7 in 2015, from 6
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.
Puja in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Pooja in Hindi — transliteration
- Puja in Bengali — same name
Pujas among us
people named Puja are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Puja sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- The meaning is settled, concrete and easy to explain: an offering.
- It is short, two open syllables, and nothing in it is difficult for an English mouth.
- It is instantly recognized across India and the Indian diaspora, which is a large and well-connected world to be recognized in.
- American readers will shorten the first vowel on sight and say PUH-juh, so the Pooja spelling is worth considering if that matters.
- It is a common word as well as a name, which means it is sometimes read as a thing rather than a person by people who know the word.
- Outside South Asian communities it will need a sentence of explanation, and it will get the same sentence for life.
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Puja
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Pujas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Puja are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Puja in 2025?
- Puja is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Puja with classmates?
- Puja will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More P names
The most-given names starting with P, all years combined.
Patricia#1334 · Pamela#2239 · Phyllis#11932 · Peggy#8362 · Paula#853 · Pauline#2957 · Pearl#776 · Paige#346
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Puja? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Puja and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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