Is July 22 the same as Saint Sophia's name day?

No. Sophia's traditional name days are September 17 in Greece, the feast of Saint Sophia and her three daughters, and May 15 in Germany.

Who started National Sophia Day?

The July 22 date turns up on holiday listings and in public posts each year, but nothing on record names who put it there, and no source explains the date.

Is it National Sophia Day, National Sofia Day or National Sophie Day?

They are three separate days for three spellings: Sophia on July 22, Sofia on May 30 and Sophie on July 4. The Social Security Administration also treats Sophia and Sofia as two different names.

National Sophia Day

Next celebratedThursday, July 22, 2027

A Sophia was written into the British succession and died before she could wear the crown; it went to her son as George I. July 22 is the name's day, though Europe's own calendars keep Sophia elsewhere.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEJuly 22

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYNames

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

Not documented

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A modern American day for an ancient Greek noun.

No founder, establishing act or first-observance record for National Sophia Day has been identified, and no source documents why July 22 was chosen. The date circulates anyway, on holiday listings and in public posts.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday

INTRO

Borrowed from a word Homer used for a carpenter's skill

National Sophia Day honours a name that began as a compliment about hands. The standard scholarly lexicon of ancient Greek gives skill in handicraft and art, as in carpentry, as the first sense of the word behind it.

The passage the lexicon cites is Homer. In the Iliad a carpenter's line runs straight along a ship's timber, held by a workman well skilled in all manner of craft, and the word for that craft is sophia.

Wisdom came later. By the time of the Septuagint the word had been promoted to an attribute of God, which is a long way from a carpenter's hands.

The name then climbed onto an entirely different list. In 2011 Sophia was the most popular name given to American girls, and it held the top spot for three straight years.

ORIGINS

Sophia Day history

INTRODUCTION

Two Sophias hold this name in place, and only one of them is a person. The other is the great church of Constantinople, dedicated in 360 under a completely different name.

The person comes first. The Orthodox churches date her martyrdom to the reign of the emperor Hadrian, and her story is an allegory built out of names.

CHAPTER 01

A mother called Wisdom

The Orthodox Church in America records a Christian widow in Italy who named her daughters for the three Christian virtues: Faith, twelve years old, Hope, ten, and Love, nine. Their mother is Wisdom, which is the whole architecture of the story.

An official named Antiochus denounced the family, and Hadrian had them brought to Rome. All three girls were beheaded. Their mother buried them on a high hill, sat by the graves for three days, and died there.

CHAPTER 02

The church that was named for an idea

The building on the other side of the name started out as the Megale Ekklesia, the Great Church. The name Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom, came into use around 430, generations after that first dedication.

Justinian ordered a replacement after the Nika revolt burned the second church in 532. The new one was inaugurated in December 537, under the architects Anthemios of Tralles and Isidoros of Miletos.

The dedication is to Wisdom itself, not to any woman. Writing in 2025, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of America described Christ as uniting Logos and Sophia in Himself, and wrote of the church as the Tabernacle of Holy Wisdom.

CHAPTER 03

How July 22 got a Sophia

None of that lands on July 22, where National Sophia Day sits anyway. Who put it there is not on any record, and neither is why. The day has repetition instead of provenance: the date comes back each year on listings and in public posts.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Sophia Day

RANKINGS

Outside the top 200 in the 1980s, third in the 2010s.

Sophia does not appear at all among the 200 most popular American girls' names of the 1970s or the 1980s. It ranked 132nd for the 1990s and third for the 2010s.

LANGUAGE

Sophia is a dictionary word before it is a name

Liddell-Scott-Jones files sophia under four numbered senses, and plain wisdom is only the third of them. The second is the sound judgement credited to the seven sages.

CALENDAR

July 22 was already spoken for in Europe

Behind the Name records July 22 as Magdalena's name day in eight European calendars, Germany and Greece among them, and as Magdaléna's in Czechia and Slovakia. Sophia's own name days sit elsewhere on the year.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Sophia Day by the Numbers

424,585: US girls named Sophia, 1926-2025
68th: Sophia's rank over the last century
181,174: Sophia births in the 2010s
82,402: Sofia births in the 2010s
5th: Sophia's US rank in 2025

GOOD TO KNOW

National Sophia Day Around the World

Greece

Sophia's name day is September 17, the feast of Saint Sophia and her three daughters

Germany

the name day falls on May 15

Southern Germany

the national weather service counts that same May 15 as 'kalte Sofie', the last of the Eisheiligen, the mid-May cold snap that can still frost a crop

Russia

the three daughters are known as Vera, Nadezhda and Lyubov

Ukraine

Kyiv's Saint-Sophia Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage property, was built under Yaroslav the Wise to rival the church in Constantinople

Istanbul

the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America keeps July 24, two days after National Sophia Day, as a Day of Remembrance for Hagia Sophia

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Sophia Day

The British succession is settled on a Sophia

The Act of Settlement declares Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess Dowager of Hanover, next in the Protestant line, and settles the crown on the Heirs of Her Body being Protestants. She died in June 1714 and never wore it; her son became George I less than two months later.

The most famous Sophia was born a Sofia

Britannica records the actress as born Sofia Scicolone in 1934. The producer Carlo Ponti turned her into Sophia Loren.

A national capital is named after a church

Bulgaria's capital was Serdica under Rome and Sredets under the Bulgarians. Britannica says the restored Church of St. Sofia later gave the town its name.

A robot named Wisdom holds a United Nations title

UNDP says Sophia was named the world's first United Nations Innovation Champion. Asked at a UN meeting what could be done for people with no internet or electricity, she answered Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed by quoting William Gibson.

Sophia and Sofia are two different names on the record

The Social Security Administration ranks the spellings separately and has never merged them. For the 2000s it put Sophia 13th among girls and Sofia 73rd.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Sophia Day

Read the Greek entry for sophia

Perseus hosts Liddell-Scott-Jones in full and free. Follow the senses in the order the lexicographers numbered them and see how far the word travels before it reaches wisdom.

WRITE

Write to the Sophias in your life

A message on an unscheduled day lands harder than a card on a predictable one. Say which Sophia you thought of, the martyr, the electress or the actress.

WATCH

Watch Two Women and read the credits

Sophia Loren won the Academy Award for best actress in Vittorio De Sica's film, which Britannica calls the first Oscar for a foreign-language performance. The name on the poster is not the one on her birth record.

TRACE

Trace a building through a museum essay

The Metropolitan Museum's essay on Hagia Sophia runs through the three churches that stood on the site and what happened to the first dome. It takes about five minutes.

CHECK

Check which name day your family keeps

Behind the Name lists Sophia's name days country by country. A family with roots in Europe may already have a date on the calendar.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Sophia Day?

1 / 9

In the standard lexicon of ancient Greek, what is the first sense listed for sophia?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing on record, so July 22 is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

24sources

17primary records

2independently dated

Primary records

Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University

Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon: entry for sophia

The scholarly lexicon entry, from craft skill to speculative wisdom.