Sonya
Barely a hundred women in Poland carry it, so most Poles have never met one. It's the Russian spelling of a Greek name meaning "wisdom", close kin to Zofia and Sonia.
Sonya Pronunciation
Sonya is pronounced so-NIH-ah (/sɔˈnɨa/).
What Sonya means
Where Sonya comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Sonya grows out of the Greek Sophia, from sophia, "wisdom." Russian speakers softened Sofia into Sonya, and that pet form went on to live as a name of its own. The variants Sonia and Sonja hold the same root.
The wisdom in the name is old and literal. Dostoevsky gave it to Sonya Marmeladova in Crime and Punishment (1866), the young woman whose steadiness keeps Raskolnikov from falling apart. Tolstoy used a Sonya in War and Peace too, a cousin in the Rostov household. Many readers met the name in those pages before they met it next door.
In Poland Sonia turns up now on a class register beside Zofia, its longer cousin. The two share the Greek root, though they no longer sound like relatives.
A short name. The thing behind it is wisdom, mądrość.
How many people are named Sonya
1 in 210690 women in Poland is named Sonya. 107 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3304 among female names.
Sonya's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 girls were given the name in 2025. It has been climbing since 2025.
Sonya as a middle name
Sonya is a first name for 107 women in Poland and a middle name for another 14, an 88/12 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 2035th, between Shira (14) and Szymona (14).
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#2033 Sema14
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#2034 Shira14
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#2035 Sonya14
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#2036 Szymona14
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#2037 Talita14