Sylwia
Around 180,000 Polish women carry it, but it has nearly stopped being given: just 30 newborn girls last year. The name is Slavic at root, tied to the forest, "a woman from the woods".
Sylwia Pronunciation
Sylwia is pronounced SIHLV-yah (/ˈsɨlvja/).
What Sylwia means
Where Sylwia comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Sylwia belongs to the forest. The meaning handed down with it, "forest, from the woods," matches an old sense of woodland, the deep tree cover where a settlement ended and the wild began. A girl named Sylwia holds that woodland thread in her name.
The name has a masculine counterpart, Sylwiusz, less common on Polish rolls but grown from the same woodland root. Its patron, Saint Sylwia, was the mother of Pope Gregory the Great, which anchors the name in real record rather than legend. Sylwia keeps her main name-day on the third of November, and Sylwiusz his on the thirty-first of May.
Read a class register in a Polish school and Sylwia sits among the Anias and the Zuzannas without fuss. The name reaches back to one plain idea, a woman from the woods.
When Sylwia celebrates name day
Sylwia appears 3 times in the Polish name day calendar, 2 of them as a main name, the first on 9 July.
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 Sylwia
1 in 124 women in Poland is named Sylwia. 182,204 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #78 among female names.
Sylwia's popularity over time
30 girls were given the name in 2025, ranking #443 among newborns. It has been falling steadily since 2000. Still the #78 name among living women, even as it slips to #443 among newborns.
Where Sylwia is most popular
Sylwia is most popular in Lesser Poland, 38% above the national average (46 girls born 2019–2025), followed by Podlaskie (+35%) and Lower Silesian (+34%). It is least common in Opole and Świętokrzyskie, 70% and 51% below average respectively.
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Lesser Poland46 girls born+38%
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Podlaskie13 girls born+35%
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Lower Silesian31 girls born+34%
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Lublin20 girls born+33%
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Subcarpathian22 girls born+24%
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Masovian56 girls born+8%
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Warmian-Masurian11 girls born+4%
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Łódź19 girls born+2%
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Pomeranian21 girls born−3%
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian15 girls born−7%
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Lubusz6 girls born−18%
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Silesian24 girls born−28%
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West Pomeranian8 girls born−35%
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Greater Poland19 girls born−40%
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Świętokrzyskie4 girls born−51%
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Opole2 girls born−70%
Sylwia as a middle name
Sylwia is a first name for 182,204 women in Poland and a middle name for another 73,048, a 71/29 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 43rd, between Kazimiera (73,888) and Paulina (68,786).
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#41 Justyna74,665
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#42 Kazimiera73,888
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#43 Sylwia73,048
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#44 Paulina68,786
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#45 Patrycja62,344