Sylva

Where Sylva comes from

Sylva hasn't made it into the dictionaries we draw on, and nobody well known enough for an encyclopedia has carried it yet — so for now its story is the one the SSA record tells. Names that spell a familiar sound a new way often live here for a while before anyone writes them down.

  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1886
    First appearance
    #993 among girls, 6 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  2. 1891
    Peak, #893
    10 babies named Sylva — more than any year before or since.
  3. 1892
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #1,450.
  4. 1933
    Sylva Koscina born
    Yugoslav actress
  5. 1962
    Sylva Kelegian born
    American actress
In the dictionary

No dictionary entry for this spelling — which is its own kind of rare.

Namesakes
  • Sylva Koscina · Yugoslav actress, 1933–1994
  • Sylva Kelegian · American actress, born 1962
  • Sylva Langova · Czech-British actress, 1921–2010
  • Sylva Fischerová · Czech poet, writer, and philologist, born 1963
  • Sylva Zalmanson · Soviet-born Jewish Prisoner of Zion, human rights activist, artist and engineer, born 1944

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.