Priya is the Sanskrit word for "beloved," "dear," or "darling" — used both as a common noun (the beloved one) and as a name. It is one of the oldest and most beloved names in the Indian tradition, used in Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and Jain communities across South Asia.
The name appears in Sanskrit poetry and the Mahabharata, where Priya is used as an epithet for many female characters. It is also a common second element in compound names — Manipriya ("dear to the mind"), Akshipriya ("dear to the eye").
Increasingly visible in the U.S. and U.K.
Priya 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 Priya reduce to 6, The Nurturer. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.