Sanya
given name · Latin script
Meaning: born on Saturday
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/sɑnjə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sanya is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 25K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 164K
- GFFrench Guiana≈1 in 9.8K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 249 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 9.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈8,400 people, est.
Highest-authority source
French Guiana, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
born on Saturday
Sources 1
- A Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sanya counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈8,400 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Sanya | 44 |
| US United States | — | 2,025 | 1 in 164K | 2K | Sanya | 249 |
| RU Russia | — | ≈350 est. | ≈1 in 411K | — | Sanya | 32 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 225K | 53 | Sanya | 86 |
| FR France | — | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 314K | 67 | — | 2 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 150K | 1 | Sanya | 64 |
| JM Jamaica | #994 | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 28K | — | Sanya | 13 |
| SE Sweden | — | 63 | 1 in 162K | 63 | — | 6 |
| GF French Guiana | — | ≈20 est. | ≈1 in 9.8K | 5 | — | — |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 973 (French Guiana). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Sanya is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Akan, sdnyiwA, fin, pewter; pewter- vessel, pewter-dish, tin- plate; pewter ware
as a wordDictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi)
Russian: pet form of ALEXANDER and ALEXANDRA .
as a word
In lac, watermelon
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In umb, pull (wool
as a wordVocabulary of the Umbundu Language
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Sanya Richards-Rossb. 1985USJamaican-American sprinter
- Sanya Herzigb. 1991CHbadminton player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 57 sources across 30 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2K | #7,508 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 74 | #7,508 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 63 | #11,648 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 35 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 18 | — |
| GF French Guiana | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 973 (French Guiana) | 2006 | 5 | #172 |
| AU Australia | AU state BDM — consolidated top baby names (NSW + SA + QLD) | 2017 | 1 | — |
| AU Australia | SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present) | 2017 | 1 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2019 | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Sanya mean, and where does it come from?
- born on Saturday Recorded by A Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India.
- What are other forms of the name Sanya?
- In the etymology graph, Saniyya is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Sanya?
- A machine transcription gives /sɑnjə/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Sanya a male or female name?
- Sanya is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Sanya have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 8.4 thousand people named Sanya in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sanya.
- How common is the name Sanya?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,025 people named Sanya in 2020, about 1 in 164 thousand residents.
- How common is Sanya compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Sanya is the 994th most common given name of 21,568 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sanya?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/sanyaThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Sanya” — the 994th most common given name in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.