Sonya

Sonya

Sonia is a feminine given name in many areas of the world including the West, Russia, Iran, and South Asia. Sonia and its variant spellings Sonja and Sonya are derived from the Russian hypocoristic Sonya, an abbreviation of Sofiya (Greek Sophia "Wisdom").The name was popularised in the English-speaking world by characters in the novels Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866, English translation 1885) and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869, English translation 1886), and later by a 1917 bestselling novel, Sonia: Between Two Worlds, by Stephen McKenna.Scandinavian countries spell the name with the letter j: Sonja, while many English speaking countries spell it with i or y: Sonia or Sonya. Many other variant spellings exist. Although the most common English pronunciation is , is also possible.

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