Sylvia comes from the Latin silva, meaning "forest" or "wood." Rhea Silvia was the legendary mother of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome. The name has been in continuous use since antiquity.
Sylvia peaked in the U.S. at #65 in 1937 and faded gradually. Today Sylvia sits in the U.S. top 700 and is rising as part of the vintage revival.
Sylvia 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 Sylvia reduce to 7, The Seeker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.