Girl · Latin
Silvia
Say it: SIL-vee-uh
Meaning
From silva 'forest, wood'.
Certainscholars agree on this meaning.
Kept in literature through Rhea Silvia and Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona; very common in 20th-century Europe.
Its wave through time
Most used in the 1970s
In the United States
- 20,430 babies given this name since 1884
- At its height in 1974, about 1 in 4,100 girls
- 156 babies in 2020
Through the ages
- Ancient Rome750 BC to AD 476
- The Early Middle Ages400 to 800
- The Renaissance1400 to 1600
- Victorian and Belle Époque1837 to 1914
- The Modern Age1880 to today
Used by
The family of the name
Other spellings: Sylvia
| Italian | Silvia |
|---|---|
| Spanish | Silvia |
| French | Sylvie |
| Portuguese | Sílvia |
| English | Sylvia |
Famous bearers
- Rhea Silvia, legendary mother of Romulus and Remus
- St. Silvia, mother of Pope Gregory the Great
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- Roman literature and history (Livy, Cicero, Tacitus and others)
- Well-known works of literature
- National birth statistics of European countries source
- United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source
Meanings and histories are compiled from the study of names and their languages and checked by a second review.
Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.