Soraya
From Hebrew, for the Pleiades: the cluster of stars. Only 124 Polish women carry it, so most people here have never met one, and the few births each year are slowly ticking up.
Soraya Pronunciation
Soraya is pronounced so-rah-IH-ah (/sɔraˈɨa/).
What Soraya means
Where Soraya comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Soraya points at the sky. Its short meaning names the Pleiades, the star cluster that farmers in the old world watched to know when to plant and when to sail. The deeper origin sits in Hebrew, while the form most readers recognize came through Arabic, where the same cluster was called al-Thurayya.
The best documented bearer is Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari, who was empress of Iran from 1951 until 1958. Her divorce made her a fixture of European magazines, and for a generation the name meant her.
In Poland the name stays rare, so a Soraya is usually the only one in a class register. It has no Polish diminutive of its own, which leaves it standing apart on an official form at the urząd. The meaning holds under all of it: Soraya is the Pleiades, six or seven stars close together in the winter sky.
How many people are named Soraya
1 in 181805 women in Poland is named Soraya. 124 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3020 among female names.
Soraya's popularity over time
3 girls were given the name in 2025, ranking #1360 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2022.
Where Soraya is most popular
Soraya is most popular in Łódź, 468% above the national average (2 girls born 2019–2025), followed by Lower Silesian (+358%) and Masovian (+103%).
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Łódź2 girls born+468%
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Lower Silesian2 girls born+358%
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Masovian2 girls born+103%
Soraya as a middle name
Soraya is a first name for 124 women in Poland and a middle name for another 40, a 76/24 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1097th, between Rebeca (40) and Thuy (40).
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#1095 Meryem40
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#1096 Rebeca40
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#1097 Soraya40
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#1098 Thuy40
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#1099 Adelaida39