Vanja
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Slavonic; usually a form of Ivan or John
Used for both men and women, depending on the country· national registers that list names by sex disagree
- Norway (SSB): listed as female
- Slovenia (SURS, 2025): listed as female
- Brazil (IBGE): listed as female
- United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed under both sexes
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 26 countries · latest register: SURS, 2025
/vəndʒə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Vanja is a given name used for both men and women, depending on the country, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Bulgaria it is the 88th most common given name.
- RSSerbia≈1 in 666(inferred from the name graph)
- HRCroatia1 in 1.1K
- SESweden1 in 2.3K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Vanja itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 153 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 666 (inferred from the name graph)
124,864 named Vania, 2022
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Serbia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Ваня in RU Russia, BY Belarus and Vanya in BG Bulgaria.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Slavonic; usually a form of Ivan or John
Cited for this meaning 1
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Vanja 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | — | 124,864as Vania | 1 in 1.7K | 137K | — | 3 |
| RS Serbia | #101 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 666 | listed | Vanja | 60 |
| RU Russia | — | ≈9,400 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Ваня | 62 |
| BY Belarus | #459 | ≈7,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 1 | Ваня | 10 |
| BA Bosnia & Herzegovina | #162 | ≈4,900 est. | ≈1 in 780 | — | Vanja | 36 |
| SE Sweden | #722 | 4,365 | 1 in 2.3K | 4.4K | Vanja | 47 |
| HR Croatia | #257 | 4,014 | 1 in 1.1K | 4K | Vanja | 108 |
| SI Slovenia | #146 | 2,305 | 1 in 912 | 2.1K | Vanja | 36 |
| BG Bulgaria | #88 | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 44K | — | Vanya | 113 |
124,864 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. 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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SURS — resident population given names; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); Universal Dependencies Belarusian-HSE Corpus — Person Names (UD_Belarusian-HSE). 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)Vanja is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, Vanja är ursprungligen en smekform till det ryska → Ivan. Namnet var således från början ett mansnamn men har i Norden kommit att uppfattas som ett kvinnonamn på grund av ändelsen -a (jfr → Anna, → Greta, → Carla). I den rikssvenska almanackan 24 maj.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In German, weibl. Vom., schwedische oder italie nische Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Scandinavian: from the Russian name VANYA , but used as a girl's name because in the Scandinavian languages the ending - a is typical of female names.
as a word
In Norwegian, a female given name, occasionally also given to men
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In men, fringe, tassel. Va njésia, borders
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende 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)- Vanja Blombergb. 1929SESwedish artistic gymnast
- Vanya Voynovab. 1934BGnot in their usual namebasketball player (1934.–1993.)
- Vanja Bulićb. 1947RSSerbian writer and journalist
- Vanja Cernjulb. 1968HRCroatian cinematographer
- Ivanab. 1969BGnot in their usual nameBulgarian female singer
- Vania Millánb. 1978ESnot in their usual nameSpanish model
- Vanja Udovičićb. 1982RSSerbian politician and water polo player
- Vanja Milinković-Savićb. 1997RSSerbian footballer (born 1997)
- Vanja Marinkovićb. 1997RSSerbian basketball player (born 1997)
- Vanja Drkušićb. 1999SISlovenian association football 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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)53 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 4.4K | #672 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 4K | #239 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 3.9K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 2.7K | — |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 2.1K | #244 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2025 | 2.1K | #129 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 1.2K | #8,324 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 1.1K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.1K | #7,790 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2025 | 241 | #455 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 1990 | 25 | — |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — Najpogostejša imena in priimki (population register) | 2023 | 5 | — |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia given-name 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 are other forms of the name Vanja?
- In the etymology graph, Janet, Jack and Janice are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Is Vanja a male or female name?
- Vanja is used for both men and women, depending on the country. National registers that list names by sex disagree: Norway (SSB): listed as female; Slovenia (SURS, 2025): listed as female; Brazil (IBGE): listed as female; United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed under both sexes. We don't publish a percentage split.
- What does the name Vanja mean, and where does it come from?
- Slavonic; usually a form of Ivan or John Recorded by Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular….
- How do you pronounce Vanja?
- A machine transcription gives /vəndʒə/ (IPA) for Russian.
- In which country does Vanja have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 125 thousand people named Vania, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Vanja?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 4,365 people named Vanja, about 1 in 2.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Vanja compared with other names?
- In Bulgaria, Vanja is the 88th most common given name of 22,906 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Vanja?
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/vanjaThe 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, “Vanja” — the 88th most common given name in Bulgaria. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.