Name Awesome

Puja

Girls' name

Possibly to mix, fill, give lavishly, through पूजा

Puja has been given to 818 babies in the U.S. since 1975. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1988, with 44 recorded.

Babies named Puja, 2015

1 in 529,000

Puja over time, 1880–2025

Girls
020406018801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Puja: meaning, origin, and history

Possibly to mix, fill, give lavishly, through पूजा

Sanskrit

What Puja means

Puja belongs to the name family reached through Puja → पूजा. Its meaning is “to mix, fill, give lavishly”.

Origin, language, and formation

Puja is used in English. Its origins include Sanskrit.

Puja comes through Sanskrit पूजा.

Related names and everyday forms

Related names include पूजा.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 818 girls were recorded with the name Puja between 1975 and 2015. Its highest annual count was 44 in 1988; its best national rank was #2,287 in 1984.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

Wiktionary material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

How common is Puja?

Puja had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2015, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2015
1 in 529,000
7 of 3,701,574 births
Among girls only
1 in 255,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2015
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
366,535 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Puja sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2015 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 366,535 children born in 2015 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Puja. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Pujas were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Puja was born before 1991 — so the typical Puja is around 34 today.

Median birth year
1991
About 34 years old
Biggest decade
1980s
38.1% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
52.3%
A modern name
Recorded since 1950
818
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1980s — 38.1% of all recorded uses (312).

Is Puja rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1988 (44)
Years since peak
37
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Shifting
21.3% average annual change
Best rank ever
#2,287
1984

Spellings of Puja

Puja is not the most common spelling — Paula is, with 46.3% against Puja's 0.13%.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Puja is used

Across 1910–2025, Puja was most concentrated in Illinois — about 1 in 100,000 girls, against 1 in 219,767 across all states with data. It was least common in Pennsylvania (1 in —).

01 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Illinois1 in 100,000
  2. 2New Jersey1 in 100,000
  3. 3California1 in —
  4. 4New York1 in —
  5. 5Pennsylvania1 in —

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Puja has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Puja around the world

Where Puja ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • England & Wales
    1996–2014
    #4,684
    in 2014
  • Canada
    1991–2001
    #2,611
    in 2001

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics and Statistics Canada. ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0. StatCan data under Statistics Canada Open Licence.

Puja by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#2,287
1984
Peak year
1988
44 that year
First recorded
1975
Last recorded
2015
All-time count
818
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Puja

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

AnujaAujaSujaTaujaSindhujaTanuja

Sibling names for Puja

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Puja

Top names of 1988, Puja's peak yearThe 1980s in fullOther names that peaked in 1984Girls' names starting with PPunjabi Girl NamesPunjabi Names