Maja
A Slavic name tied to the goddess Maia: "good mother", the earth that makes things grow. Around 185,000 Polish women carry it today and it still sits inside the top 100, though fewer girls get it each year now.
Maja Pronunciation
Maja is pronounced MAH-yah (/ˈmaja/).
What Maja means
Where Maja comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Maja grows from Slavic roots, and Poland took to it quickly. The diminutive Majka is what a mother might call through an open window, softer and closer than the full name. The variant Maia keeps a spelling that points toward something older.
That older thread is where the meaning "good mother" comes from. It ties Maja to Maia, the ancient goddess of growth and the earth. The sense was attached to the name later, and it was not present in the plain Slavic beginning. In Polish the association runs further still, toward bogini wzrastania, toward matka-ziemia, the earth understood as a mother who feeds.
Maja has been among the most popular girls' names in Poland for years now. Read a class register in Warsaw and you will likely find two. The name is short. It holds the diminutive Majka and the variant Maia, and behind both sits that borrowed sense of the good mother.
When Maja celebrates name day
Maja appears 3 times in the Polish name day calendar, 1 of them as a main name, the first on 12 September.
The days Polish calendars list this name on. By custom you celebrate one of them, usually the first after your birthday.
Rarer dates. Only the most complete calendars add this name on these days. Most skip them, so hardly anyone celebrates then.
How many people are named Maja
1 in 122 women in Poland is named Maja. 184,652 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #73 among female names.
Maja's popularity over time
3,873 girls were given the name in 2025, ranking #10 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2000.
Where Maja is most popular
Maja is given fairly evenly across Poland, with no strong regional preference. It leans slightly toward Lubusz (12% above the national average) and is least common in Masovian (12% below).
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Lubusz960 girls born+12%
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Świętokrzyskie1,078 girls born+12%
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Warmian-Masurian1,369 girls born+10%
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West Pomeranian1,604 girls born+10%
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Łódź2,360 girls born+7%
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Opole847 girls born+6%
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Subcarpathian2,171 girls born+4%
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Silesian4,120 girls born+4%
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian1,951 girls born+3%
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Pomeranian2,565 girls born0%
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Lublin1,755 girls born−1%
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Lower Silesian2,669 girls born−2%
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Lesser Poland3,868 girls born−2%
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Podlaskie1,102 girls born−3%
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Greater Poland3,622 girls born−3%
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Masovian5,426 girls born−12%
Maja as a middle name
Maja is a first name for 184,652 women in Poland and a middle name for another 23,460, an 89/11 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 80th, between Alina (23,919) and Bogusława (23,319).
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#78 Bronisława24,310
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#79 Alina23,919
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#80 Maja23,460
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#81 Bogusława23,319
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#82 Regina23,065