Gender: Feminine
Origin: Slavonic/Arabic نديّة
Meaning: see below
(NAHD-yah); (NAH-dee-uh)

Nadia has a touch of class, a mysterious vibe and an exotic appeal. Nadia is also very cross-cultural, she has two different origins and meanings and can easily be used in virtually every country in the world.

First, we have Slavic Nadia, a derivative of the Russian Nadezhda, meaning, “hope.” If that meaning isn’t sweet enough for you, then you might like Nadia’s meaning in Arabic, “delicate; tender; moist.” Though its Arabic version is sometimes transliterated as Nadiyya نديّة, its pronounced exactly the same way as its Slavic homonym.

During the Soviet era of Russia, Nadia was used as a neologism, that is one of the hundreds of Russian given names created during the Russian Revolution to celebrate communistic ideas. In this case, Nadia was suppose to be a formation of nad (above) and ia/ija (era).

Nadia has enjoyed popularity outside of the East. It suddenly became vogue in France in the 19th century, possibly due to the Ballet Russe, where it was later francanized to Nadine. In Germany, it is often rendered as Nadja (NAHD-yah). The name is very popular throughout Eastern Europe.

The name is borne by Nadia Comaneci a famous Romanian Olympic gold gymnast.

Currently, Nadja is the 86th most popular female name in Bosnia & Herzegovina. Her Nadia counterpart’s rankings in other countries are as follows:

• # 22 (Poland, 2010)
• # 69 (Catalonia, 2010)
• # 96 (Spain, 2010)
• # 240 (Netherlands, 2010)
• # 247 (United States, 2010)
• # 444 (France, 2009)

Other forms include:

• Nadia Надя Ναδια Nადია (Albanian/Bulgarian/Dutch/English/Georgian/German/Greek/Lithuanian/Macedonian/Polish/Romanian/Scandinavian/Spanish)
• Nadiyya (Arabic: variant transcripted form)
• NadyaՆադյա (Arabic/Armenian/Persian)
• Nadiye (Azeri/Kurdish/Turkish)
• Nadja Надя (Bosnian/Chechen/Circassian/Croatian/Estonian/German/Kazakh/Kyrgyz/Latvian/Serbian/Slovene/Russian/Tatar/Turkmen/Ukrainian)
• Naďa (Czech/Slovak)
• Nadine (French/English)
• Nádja (Hungarian)
• Nadinka (Hungarian)
• Nadea (Italian: obscure)
• Nadiana (Italian: obscure)
• Nadina (Italian)
• Nádia (Portuguese)
• Nodja Нодя (Tajik/Uzbek)

Unusual Italian masculine forms are: Naddo/Naddo, Nadio and Nadino.

Designated name-days are: January 17 (Italy), August 1 (Hungary/Spain), August 18 (Poland), September 30/December 18 (German),