Idia (c. late 1400s-c. 1540) was the first Iyoba (Queen Mother) of the Benin Empire — mother of Oba Esigie. She personally led the Benin army in battle during her son's war against the neighboring Idah Kingdom — preserving the empire in its crisis. Her bronze ivory pendant mask is one of the iconic artworks of Benin — looted by the British in 1897, it became the FESTAC '77 emblem of pan-African heritage.
The first woman elevated to the formal title of Iyoba in Benin history.
Idia does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Idia reduce to 5, The Seeker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.