Diya is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
Diya is a well-known name in the US, but is still special. It is currently only given to every ten thousandth girl, and therefore ranks at 1,108 in the SmartGenius statistics. This means there are 1,107 girls names that are more common, but also tens of thousands that are much rarer. If you polled the whole US population – children, adults and seniors – you’d find less than one in 10,000 to be named Diya.
Based on the Sanskrit word ‘diyam’, the name Diya means ‘lamp’ or ‘light’. In Hinduism, Diya has a deep spiritual significance because it is associated with Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity. Since the 1990s, this first name is also known in the US.
A diya or deepam is... a traditional Indian oil lamp that is in important ceremonies including Diwali.
You may not know anyone named Diya, but there’s a good chance you live in the same state as someone with that name. In fact, 26 states are home to women and girls named Diya. (To be fair, a given name is only included in a state’s official statistics if there are at least five people with that name living in that state – so it’s entirely possible that there are still a few women and girls named Diya living in one state or another. If your name is Diya and you live outside of the states highlighted on the map, please let us know so we can refine our statistics even further). And while the first name is present in many states, it is still not one of the popular ones. In New Jersey, which has the most people named Diya relative to the population, you still have to ask 8,384 women and girls their names before you hear Diya as an answer just once.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter D is quite common as an initial letter for girls' names. To be precise, 5.6% of all girls' names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of girls' names, by the way, are A, S and M.
With four letters, the name Diya is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Therefore: As 5.6% of all girls' names start with D, this initial letter occurs much more often than all 26 letters on average. And maybe interesting to know: of all the names that begin with a D, Dorothy is the most common.
If your name is Diya and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Diya, you can simply say:
Dinosaur
Igloo
Yoyo
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Diya
Diya
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
D
I
Y
A
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
D
I
Y
A
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Diya sounds like this:
