Fun Facts About the Name Uma
- More than 1 thousand babies named Uma: U.S. records list 1,900 babies given the name Uma from 1880 through 2025.
What Does the Name Uma Mean?
Uma is a Sanskrit name. In that language umā is a word for flax, the fiber plant (Linum usitatissimum), and the same word serves as a name of the goddess who is Shiva's consort, known in later tradition as Parvati. The botanical sense is the literal, dictionary meaning; it survives mainly in lexicons, while the name is far more familiar as the goddess's name.
Puranic tradition offers a different account. In several tellings, the goddess's mother, Menā, watched her daughter begin severe austerities and cried out u mā, "O, do not," and the exclamation became the name. This is wordplay within the tradition - u as a cry, mā as a negative - and it explains the sound of the name rather than its origin. A minority view looks to a Dravidian source, comparing Tamil umai, used as a title for a mother goddess, but that derivation is not established.
Popular name lists sometimes gloss Uma as "light" or "splendor." Those are devotional and symbolic readings attached to the goddess, not the sense recorded for the word itself. What dictionaries give is "flax," and the name's religious weight comes from the identity of the goddess who bears it, not from the word's translation.
Uma Name History & Origins
The earliest appearance of the name is in the Kena Upanishad (3.12), where Umā Haimavatī, "Uma, daughter of the Himalaya," appears to Indra and the other gods and explains the nature of Brahman, the ultimate reality. The Upanishad is generally placed somewhere in the first millennium BCE. In this passage she is a revealer of knowledge rather than a wife or a mother; she is named only by her mountain ancestry.
Later Puranic texts build out the figure. She is the daughter of Himavat, the Himalaya, and of Menā, and in most accounts she is Parvati, the wife of Shiva, and is identified with Durga. The compound Umāpati, "husband of Uma," is a standard epithet of Shiva, and Umāmaheśvara names both the paired image of Shiva and Uma and the theological tradition that treats the two as a single principle. Regional worship often addresses her by other names - Durga, Kali, Gauri, Bhavani - while Uma is the intimate, family name, most prominent in Bengal, where Durga Puja celebrates her yearly return to her parents' home.
From Sanskrit the name passed into the modern languages of India and into Hindu communities of Southeast Asia. It is used in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada, among others, and also in Nepali and Newari; Tamil has the related umai for the goddess. The name appears in Balinese and Javanese naming as well. In the English-speaking world the best-known bearer is the American actress Uma Thurman, born in 1970, who was named by her father, the scholar of Tibetan Buddhism Robert Thurman.
Words that look alike are not always related: the Indonesian and Balinese uma, an unirrigated rice field, is a separate word with a different origin and has nothing to do with the Sanskrit name.
How Popular is the Name Uma?
Uma has historically been an exceptionally rare given name in the United States, remaining well outside the national mainstream. It saw its highest recorded annual births in 2006. Its best rank was #2,349 in 2006.
U.S. name popularity from 1880-2025, based on SSA data. Rank shows how the name compares with other names - lower numbers mean greater popularity. Births shows how many babies received the name each year.
| Year | Rank | Births | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | #3,025 | 55 | 0.0034% |
| 2024 | #2,736 | 63 | 0.0039% |
| 2023 | #2,487 | 72 | 0.0045% |
| 2022 | #2,485 | 73 | 0.0045% |
| 2021 | #2,531 | 70 | 0.0043% |
| 2020 | #2,499 | 70 | 0.0043% |
| 2019 | #2,505 | 71 | 0.0042% |
| 2018 | #2,555 | 69 | 0.0041% |
| 2017 | #2,483 | 73 | 0.0042% |
| 2016 | #2,591 | 69 | 0.0039% |
| 2015 | #2,709 | 66 | 0.0037% |
| 2014 | #2,369 | 78 | 0.0044% |
| 2013 | #2,969 | 57 | 0.0032% |
| 2012 | #2,424 | 77 | 0.0044% |
| 2011 | #2,865 | 61 | 0.0035% |
| 2010 | #2,901 | 60 | 0.0034% |
| 2009 | #2,935 | 60 | 0.0033% |
| 2008 | #3,372 | 50 | 0.0026% |
| 2007 | #2,643 | 70 | 0.0036% |
| 2006 | #2,349 | 81 | 0.0043% |
| 2005 | #2,635 | 65 | 0.0035% |
| 2004 | #2,846 | 57 | 0.0031% |
| 2003 | #3,128 | 48 | 0.0026% |
| 2002 | #3,804 | 35 | 0.0019% |
| 2001 | #3,545 | 38 | 0.0021% |
| 2000 | #2,705 | 55 | 0.0030% |
| 1999 | #4,196 | 28 | 0.0016% |
| 1998 | #3,642 | 33 | 0.0019% |
| 1997 | #3,810 | 30 | 0.0017% |
| 1996 | #4,302 | 25 | 0.0014% |
| 1995 | #5,433 | 18 | 0.0010% |
| 1994 | #8,767 | 10 | 0.0006% |
| 1993 | #15,695 | 5 | 0.0003% |
| 1992 | #9,456 | 9 | 0.0005% |
| 1991 | #11,463 | 7 | 0.0004% |
| 1990 | #15,161 | 5 | 0.0003% |
| 1988 | #9,211 | 8 | 0.0004% |
| 1986 | #9,500 | 7 | 0.0004% |
| 1983 | #12,003 | 5 | 0.0003% |
| 1982 | #9,194 | 7 | 0.0004% |
| 1981 | #9,070 | 7 | 0.0004% |
| 1980 | #9,061 | 7 | 0.0004% |
| 1979 | #8,983 | 7 | 0.0004% |
| 1978 | #8,520 | 7 | 0.0005% |
| 1976 | #10,833 | 5 | 0.0003% |
| 1972 | #6,534 | 8 | 0.0005% |
| 1970 | #7,953 | 6 | 0.0003% |
| 1966 | #5,250 | 8 | 0.0005% |
| 1961 | #7,474 | 5 | 0.0002% |
Name popularity over more than a century, based on Social Security Administration data. Gaps in the chart indicate years when the name does not appear in the published records.
