Haya
From Hebrew, where it means "life". Most Poles will never meet one: fewer than sixty women carry it, and no girl has been given it in years.
Haya Pronunciation
Haya is pronounced khah-IH-ah (/xaˈɨa/).
What Haya means
Where Haya comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Haya comes from Hebrew, from the root that means life. The Hebrew word chai means "living," and its feminine forms, Chaya and Chava, gave the language a name that says simply: life, życie. Chava is the name we render in English as Eve, the first woman, the mother of the living. So Haya sits close to one of the oldest names in the book.
The name travels across two traditions. Jewish families have used Chaya for centuries, sometimes as a name given to a sick child in hope of recovery. In Arabic, the word hayah also means life, and Hayat is a common name built on it. Haya lands between these two, spelled short and open.
In a Polish class register, Haya reads as clearly foreign, and teachers ask twice how to say it.
The meaning here is not a later gloss or a folk story. It is the origin. Hebrew chai, life, and Haya carries that root without disguise. When someone asks what it means, the answer is one word: życie, life.
How many people are named Haya
1 in 395506 women in Poland is named Haya. 57 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #4918 among female names.
Haya's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 girls were given the name in 2025. It has been stable for a decade.
Haya as a middle name
Haya is a first name for 57 women in Poland and a middle name for another 52, a 52/48 split, almost evenly. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 944th, between Chisom (52) and Jo (52).
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#942 Waltraud53
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#943 Chisom52
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#944 Haya52
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#945 Jo52
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#946 Leticia52