Silva
Feminine · “A wood”
Silva is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 901 girls against 10 boys since 1880.
Silva is the Latin word for a wood, and in one part of the world it is not a first name at all — it is the single commonest surname there is, carried by millions of people who have never thought of it as meaning anything.
How old is the name Silva?
Silva first appears in US birth records in 1892 — 133 years ago. The typical Silva alive today was born around 1968, making them about 57 years old. About 600 people named Silva are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Silva most popular?
Silva peaked in 1892, reaching #1450 nationally. See the whole 1892 chart.
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Silva
Da Silva is the most common surname in Portugal and Brazil by a wide margin — so common that it functions almost as a default, the name that appears when a family name was recorded without much thought about it. It means, simply, of the woods. What happened in the American record is the reverse of that: the same word appears as a first name, given to daughters in a decade when Latin words were fashionable and nobody involved was Portuguese. One word, two countries, two entirely different jobs — a surname so ordinary it is nearly anonymous in one place, and a rare and rather literary first name in the other.
Meaning
A wood, a forest
The Latin noun, unchanged. In Portuguese it is both the ordinary word for a wood and the surname of an enormous share of the population; in the American record of the eighteen-nineties it turns up instead as a woman's given name, which is the unusual half of the story.
Pronouncing Silva
SIL-vuh
Two syllables, stress at the front. Portuguese says SEEL-vah, with a fuller final vowel.
Nicknames for Silva
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
- 1892
- Most girls named
- 196919 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1450reached in 1892
- Change vs 2016
- 0.0%6 in 2023, 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.
Silva in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Silva in Portuguese — same name
- Selva in Italian — related form
- Selva in Spanish — related form
Silvas among us
people named Silva 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
Silva 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 concrete, settled and immediately understood in several languages.
- It is short and read correctly on sight.
- It is a genuine Latin word rather than an invented sound.
- Portuguese and Brazilian speakers will hear a surname, and a very common one.
- Sylvia is far more familiar as a first name and hers will be lengthened to it.
- The spelling is recorded for a few boys, but nearly every child with it is a girl.
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What they receive
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Silva
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Silvas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Silva are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Silva in 2025?
- Silva is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Silva with classmates?
- Silva will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More S names
The most-given names starting with S, all years combined.
Susan#1085 · Sarah#90 · Sandra#1207 · Stephanie#557 · Sharon#1250 · Shirley#1581 · Samantha#151 · Sophia#5
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Silva? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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