Olivia, Amelia, Sophia: the names that end in ia

One American girl in 11 born in 2017 had a first name ending in ia. That is the most in any year we hold, and five of America's top ten girls' names end that way now: Olivia 1st, Amelia 4th, Sophia 5th, Mia 6th and Sofia 9th. There were three in 2015, and in no year of the long series to 2008 were there more than two. In England and Wales it is one girl in 12, with Olivia first and Amelia third. It is the biggest ending we have counted, bigger than son, O, ley or er, and it is the first one where the two countries agree almost exactly: 88 girls per 1,000 there, 83 here.

It has never been rare. In 129 years of American records the ending never fell below one girl in 35. But the girls who had it were different each time. In 1880 it was Julia, Lydia and Georgia. In 1951 it was one girl in 14, and 44% of those girls were called Patricia. Patricia was 3rd in America for most of the years from 1937 to 1952. She left the top 1,000 in 2020, and 22 girls were given the name in England and Wales last year.

How we counted

A name counts if its last two letters, as the official file spells it, are i and a. That is spelling, not sound, so Olivia, Sophia, Sofia, Mia, Aria, Maria and Georgia all count, and Sophie, Amelie, Maya and Mya do not. Boys and girls are counted from their own lists in the files, never from our catalogue's flag. There is no hand list. The American series from 1880 to 2008 holds the top 1,000 names each year, so its figures are a floor; the full American files for 1990 to 2017 and the English and Welsh files for 2024 and 2025 count every name. American counts are from 2017, the newest full count we hold, and the American rankings run to 2025. This is the sixth ending we have counted, after the last letter, son, O, ley and er.

Julia, Virginia, Patricia

In 1880, 72 girls' names ending in ia were in the American top 1,000, more than in any year since, and five were in the top 100: Julia 26th, Lydia 77th, Georgia 84th, Amelia 96th and Virginia 99th. Together the ending was 36 girls in every 1,000, one in 28, and Julia was 22% of it. The ending then drifted down to its lowest point, one girl in 35 in 1896, while Julia slipped to 46th. She did not leave the top 100 until 1934, and she is 131st in America today.

Virginia took over in 1907. She was 99th in 1880, 29th in 1910, 12th in 1915, 7th in 1920 and 6th in 1921, when she was 15 girls per 1,000 and 38% of the ending. She stayed in the top ten until 1928 and in the top 100 until 1959. Then Patricia. First listed in 1886 at 879th, she was 104th in 1920, 28th in 1925, 7th in 1930, 5th in 1935 and 3rd in 1937, and she was 3rd in 13 of the 16 years from 1937 to 1952. In 1951 she was 31 girls per 1,000, one girl in 33, and 44% of every girl with the ending. The ending itself was 70 per 1,000 that year, one girl in 14, its record in the long series, and Patricia, Cynthia, Gloria and Virginia were 71% of it between them. In 1943 there were only 38 ia names in the top 1,000, the fewest. It was a big ending made of a few names.

Cynthia, 7th in 1957, was the last of them. Patricia stayed in the top ten until 1966 and the top 100 until 1990, and the ending fell with her: one girl in 24 in 1970, one in 32 in 1980, and 31 per 1,000 in 1982, lower than in any year since 1907. The leaders in those years were Maria, then Alicia, then Victoria, and none of them was ever higher than 16th. Patricia was 97th in 1990, 498th in 2008, 803rd in 2015, and last listed in 2019. Cynthia left the top 1,000 this year. Gloria is 655th, Virginia 526th.

Olivia, and everyone else

Olivia was in the American top 1,000 in every year we hold, and for most of them she was nowhere: 235th in 1880, 442nd in 1960, 543rd in 1971. Then 231st in 1980, 72nd in 1990, 16th in 2000, 4th in 2004. She has been the biggest ia name in America since 2000, apart from 2007 and 2010, when Sophia passed her, and number one outright since 2019. Sophia was 923rd in 1956. Amelia was 489th in 1968. Mia was not in the top 1,000 at all until 1964. Sofia was in and out of it before 1935 and gone from it between 1936 and 1968. Aria was 953rd in 1880 and then out for 119 years.

The full files, which count every name, show how far it has gone. In 1990 one American girl in 20 had the ending, and the biggest name, Victoria, was 10% of them. In 2000 one in 15; in 2008 one in 13; in 2017 one in 11, 151,440 girls, across 863 spellings with 22 names given to 1,000 or more. Olivia was 18,632 of them, 12%. Sophia 14,831, Mia 13,437, Amelia 11,800: the four together are 39% of the ending. Then Sofia, Victoria, Aria, Emilia, Lydia, Julia, Maria, Natalia, Valeria, Cecilia, Anastasia, Lucia, Malia, Alivia, Georgia, Alexandria, Leia, Talia. So the ending is as big as it was under Patricia, and bigger, but it is spread across four names at the top and twenty behind them, where in 1951 it was one name and three others.

The names behind it are mostly old. Two thirds of the American girls given an ia name in 2017 had a name that was in the top 1,000 before 1900: Olivia, Sophia, Amelia, Victoria, Lydia, Julia, Maria, Georgia, Cecilia, Lucia, Anastasia. Mia is the biggest of the rest, with Natalia, Malia, Alivia, Leia and Talia behind her.

Britain: Olivia and Amelia, then Ophelia

In England and Wales in 2025, 20,964 girls had a name ending in ia, one in 12, across 344 names, 53 of them given to 50 or more girls. Nine are in our top 100: Olivia 1st with 2,386, Amelia 3rd with 2,153, Sophia 13th, Sofia 17th, Mia 21st, Aria 34th, Emilia 51st, Ophelia 81st and Maria 88th. Olivia and Amelia are 22% of the ending between them, the top five 43%. Then Aurelia 125th, Lydia 158th, Victoria 160th, Lucia 170th, Cecilia 172nd, Georgia 175th, Talia 195th, Maia 197th, Anastasia 212th and Julia 244th.

Per head the two countries give the ending to girls at almost the same rate, 88 per 1,000 in America and 83 here, and they share the top of it: Olivia, Amelia, Sophia, Sofia and Mia are the five biggest ia names in both. Below that they part. Britain's own ia names are Victorian ones America has not brought back: Aurelia is 6.1 times commoner here per head, 390 girls to 431 in a country nearly seven times the size, and Ophelia 5.1 times, 578 to 760. Both were in the American top 1,000 in 1880 and neither was in it after 1958. Maia is 2.7 times commoner here, Antonia 2.4, Alaia 2.4, Alessia 2.3, Talia 1.7, Emilia 1.6, Georgia 1.5. Anabia and Hania went to 142 and 106 girls here and under 50 in all America.

America's own are Victoria, 3.4 times commoner there per head, 7,267 girls to 312, and Natalia 3.4, Julia 2.4, Leia 1.8, Alicia 1.6, Lydia 1.5, Mia 1.4, Sophia 1.4, Olivia 1.2. And a set that barely exists here at all: Valeria went to 1,887 American girls in 2017 and 35 English and Welsh girls in 2025, Malia 1,416 and 45, Alivia 1,330 and 9, Alexandria 1,238 and 22, Magnolia 808 and 13, Virginia 608 and 9. Patricia had 302 American girls and 22 here, Cynthia 460 and 13, Gloria 538 and 49. Aria, Cecilia and Octavia are level.

Boys almost never get the ending in either country. In America in 2017 it was 662 boys, one in 2,771, and 145 of them were Zakaria. In England and Wales in 2025 it was 175 boys, one in 1,564, with Zakaria 74 of them. No boys' name ending in ia has been in the American top 1,000 in any year from 2015 to 2025.

Every ia name in either country's top 100 in 2025, with Julia, Virginia, Patricia and Cynthia, the names that led the ending in America before them. The last column is the name's rank for girls in America in 1880; “out” means outside the top 1,000. We give no English and Welsh rank for a name under 50 girls. American girls are counted in 2017, the newest full count we hold.

Since 2015

The American rankings show the ending still gathering at the top. There were nine ia names in the girls' top 100 in 2015 and there are twelve now; three in the top ten then, Olivia 2nd, Sophia 3rd and Mia 6th, and five now, with Amelia up from 12th to 4th and Sofia from 14th to 9th. Olivia has been 1st every year since 2019. Climbing further down: Ophelia from 979th to 264th, Aurelia from 801st to 290th, Alaia 667th to 117th, Magnolia 635th to 124th, Emilia 145th to 45th, Lucia 226th to 83rd, Georgia 230th to 99th, Kaia 446th to 193rd, Dahlia 412th to 215th, Sylvia 484th to 300th. Falling: Victoria from 20th to 54th, down in eight of the ten years, Julia 89th to 131st, Alexandria 212th to 474th, Alivia 215th to 484th, Nadia 345th to 565th, Alicia 359th to 460th. Out of the top 1,000 since 2015: Claudia, Patricia and Cynthia.

In England and Wales, where we hold two years, the ending fell 7.6% between 2024 and 2025 while all girls fell 1.8%, and nearly all of that is the top of it: Olivia 2,761 to 2,386, Amelia 2,448 to 2,153, Mia 1,609 to 1,372 and 14th to 21st, Sofia 1,626 to 1,490. Below them Gia went from 86 to 154, Cecilia from 224 to 282 and Sylvia from 62 to 95. One year is not a trend and we do not call it one.

What we cannot tell you

Why. The files hold what parents wrote, and two letters do not have a reason. We can say that the ending has never been rare in America, that it was carried by one name at a time for a century, Julia, Virginia, Patricia, and that it is carried by twenty names now. We cannot say why Patricia went from 3rd to out of the top 1,000 while Olivia went the other way. The rule counts letters, so it puts Mia and Gia, which are three letters long, with Alexandria and Anastasia, and it separates Sophia from Sophie and Amelia from Amelie when many parents would not. The long American series is a floor: in 2008 it gives 55 girls per 1,000 and the full file gives 75, because hundreds of small spellings sit below the top 1,000, so the 1951 record of 70 and the 2017 figure of 89 are not measured the same way. We do not hold 2009 to 2014 for America, so we cannot say which year Amelia or Sofia passed into the top ten, only where they were in 2015. And we hold two British years, so Britain's own history of the ending is not in this article.

What it means for you

If you are choosing an ia name, the thing to know is how many other parents are. In both countries the five biggest are the same five: Olivia, Amelia, Sophia, Sofia and Mia, and in England and Wales one girl in 12 has one of the 344 names with the ending. Aria, Emilia and Ophelia are in our top 100 too. If you want the ending without the crowd, Aurelia, Lucia, Cecilia, Georgia and Talia are between 100th and 200th here, and Aurelia and Ophelia are more ours than America's. Julia, 26th in America in 1880, is 244th here with 190 girls, and Victoria, 54th there, is 160th here. The ia names of 1951, Patricia, Cynthia, Gloria and Virginia, were given to 93 girls in England and Wales between them last year. On the pattern in this data they are not due back yet.