Sophia (given name)

Sophia, also spelled Sofia, is a feminine given name, from Greek Σοφία, Sophía, "Wisdom".

It was repeatedly popularised among the wider population, by the name of a character in the novel Tom Jones (1794) by Henry Fielding, in The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) by Oliver Goldsmith, and in the 1960s by Italian actress Sophia Loren (b.

South and East Slavic and Baltic languages have Sofija (Софија), Sofiya (София) and Sofya (Софья).

West Slavic (Polish and Czech-Slovak) introduced a voiced sibilant, Zofia, Žofia, Žofie.

Russian has the hypocoristic Соня (Sonya), which in the late 19th century was introduced to Western languages, in the spellings Sonya, Sonia and Sonja, via characters with this name in the novels Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866, English translation 1885) and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869, English translation 1886).

A statue of Sophia, the personification of wisdom, in the Celsus Library in Ephesus, Turkey.
A depiction of Saint Sophia and Her Three Daughters , Faith, Hope and Charity (icon of the Novgorod school, 16th century).
Sophia Loren in 1955