Sofia
Feminine · Greek roots · “Wisdom”
Sofia is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 186,744 girls against 187 boys since 1880.
Sofia is the Greek word for wisdom, worn as a name for some fifteen hundred years and still going strong. It is the F-spelling favored across Italy, Spain, Latin America, Scandinavia and the Slavic world, and it says its own name aloud: three open syllables, soh-FEE-ah, that land the same way in most languages a family is likely to speak.
How old is the name Sofia?
Sofia first appears in US birth records in 1881 — 144 years ago. The typical Sofia is a kid of about 11 — this name's wave is very recent. About 183,000 people named Sofia are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Sofia most popular?
Sofia peaked in 2025, reaching #9 nationally. Today it ranks #9, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Sofia appears on these lists:
- Transatlantic hits: loved on both sides of the ocean
- America's top 100 names right now
- Gorgeous — and about to be everywhere
- Names at their all-time peak, right now
- Generation Alpha names (born 2013 onward)
- Three-syllable names with room to move
- all guides
Works in Spanish & Latino, British and French families too:
Where it comes from
From Sophía (Greek) to Sofia
The story of Sofia
The name is simply the Greek noun sophía, wisdom, taken up as a woman's name in the early Christian east. Justinian's great church in Constantinople, completed in the sixth century, was dedicated to Hagia Sophia — Holy Wisdom — and the veneration of Saint Sophia carried the name through the Byzantine world into Russia, the Balkans and eventually western Europe. Bulgaria's capital takes its name from a church of Saint Sofia there. The spelling with f follows Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Slavic habits, while French and German settled on Sophie; English-speaking families now use both Sofia and Sophia freely, and the f-form travels more easily outside English.
Meaning
Wisdom
From Greek sophía, wisdom — the ordinary Greek noun, used unchanged as a personal name.
Cultural footprint
Sofia Coppola (b. 1971) — Oscar-winning director of Lost in Translation, of the Coppola film dynasty
Sofía Vergara (b. 1972) — Modern Family star, once the highest-paid actress on TV
Sofia Carson (b. 1993) — Disney's Descendants star and singer
Source: Wikidata — the one source on this page that is not an official agency.
How the name formed
- SophíaGreek
- SophiaByzantine and Latin
- Sofia
- Sofía
Related forms: Sofia · Sophia · Sophie · Zofia · Sofya · Zsófia
Pronouncing Sofia
soh-FEE-ah
Stress on the middle syllable in English, Spanish and Italian. Some Scandinavian and German speakers stress the first syllable instead: SOH-fee-ah. Both are the same name and neither needs correcting.
Nicknames for Sofia
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
- 1881
- Most girls named
- 20149,612 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #9reached in 2025
- Change vs 2022
- +13.3%8,252 in 2025, from 7,285
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.
Sofia in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Sofia in Greek — transliteration
- Sophia in English — spelling variant
- Sophie in French — same name
- Zofia in Polish — same name
- Sofya in Russian — transliteration
- Zsófia in Hungarian — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida. INSEE rounds every published count to the nearest five for statistical confidentiality; the ranks are calculated from the exact figures. International figures from Statistics Canada, Office for National Statistics, National Records of Scotland, INSEE. Sources
Sofias among us
people named Sofia are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 195 born in 2025 was named Sofia
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Sofia
- #9
- Sofia on the 2025 chart
- #1
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Sofia went to 8,252 girls in 2025, but Sophia is the same name said out loud. Together the 7 spellings went to 20,895, which makes it the 1st most-given girls’ name of the year — 8 places above the chart.
- Sophia12,561
- Sofia8,252
and 5 rarer spellings.
About 1 girl in 77 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 195 for Sofia 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 Kathleen test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Sofia's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Kathleen climbed just as high around 1949, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Kathleen's path sketches the road Sofia is walking now.
Sofia is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Sofia is headed
Sofia should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High 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.
Sofia beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Sofia in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Works unaltered in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and much of eastern Europe, which makes it easy on a bilingual family.
- A meaning that is settled rather than argued over: wisdom, straight from Greek.
- Ready-made short forms already in circulation — Sofi, Sofie, Sonia — so nothing has to be invented.
- Charts in Canada, England and Wales, Scotland and France as well as the US, so it reads as familiar almost anywhere.
- A record stretching back to the Byzantine church and unbroken since.
- Sofia and Sophia are both widely used, so expect a lifetime of "with an f or a ph?" — a small, permanent piece of admin rather than a real problem.
- It is genuinely common right now, and strongest in California, Texas and Florida; a Sofia may well share the name with a classmate.
- The name skews young at the moment, so it reads as a child's name more than a grown woman's — that will even out as this generation ages.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Sofia
Feminine · Greek roots · #9 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Sofias are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 183,000 people named Sofia are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Sofia?
- Sofia is one of 2 recorded spellings. Sophia is the more common one — 12,561 births in 2025 against 8,252 for Sofia.
- How popular is the name Sofia in 2025?
- Sofia ranks #9 among US girl names in 2025, with 8,252 babies given the name.
- How common is the name Sofia?
- About 1 in every 195 US girls born in 2025 was named Sofia — 8,252 in all.
- Will my child share the name Sofia with classmates?
- Roughly 1 in 8 classrooms will have a child named Sofia.
Ranked beside Sofia
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Eliana#10 · Evelyn#8 · Ava#11 · Isabella#7 · Mia#6 · Eleanor#12 · Sophia#5 · Violet#13
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Sofia? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Sofia and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration; international figures from national statistics agencies. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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