Hiwa
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Meaning
possibly a short form of Hiwa-i-te-rangi, a Māori star of Matariki, from hiwa, "alert, active"; or from Kurdish hiwa, "hope"
How popular is Hiwa around the world?
Hiwa has no published row in the national Social Security baby-name files from 1880 through 2025. Those files omit name-and-sex counts below five, so there is no popularity curve to chart and no basis for saying the name was never used. Hiwa is not on the 2025 record for Austria, which publishes every first name down to a single birth, so the name was not given there that year.
United States
no published row
Hiwa has no published row in the national Social Security baby-name files from 1880 through 2025. Those files omit name-and-sex counts below five, so there is no popularity curve to chart and no basis for saying the name was never used.
Births with a Social Security record. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration
Austria
last on record 2022
Hiwa is not on the 2025 record for Austria, which publishes every first name down to a single birth, so the name was not given there that year.
The count never rose above 2 in a year, too few to chart.
Live births in Austria by year of birth, 1984–2025, from Statistik Austria’s first-name statistics; spellings that differ only by special characters are counted together (umlauts stay apart), every name down to a single birth is published, and the count covers babies with Austrian citizenship only until 2009, every baby from 2010, and from 2015 also births abroad to mothers living in Austria. Shares divide by Statistik Austria’s count of live births from 2010, and before that by the file’s own total for the year. Source: Statistik Austria - data.statistik.gv.at (OGDEXT_VORNAMEN_1, updated 2026-07-09)
New Zealand
last on record 2024
Hiwa is not on the 2025 record for New Zealand, where names under 10 in a year are excluded at source.
share of that year’s name registrations
First given names from New Zealand birth registrations, grouped by registration year; any name under 10 in a year is excluded at source. Shares divide by Stats NZ’s count of births registered to mothers living in New Zealand, under 1% below the registry’s own count. Source: Department of Internal Affairs (New Zealand), baby name popularity over time
Not on 14 other recordsWhy
- Not on the record in Spain, Mexico City, Argentina, Puerto Rico, England and Wales, Canada, Ireland, Scotland and Poland: those registries withhold small counts, so rare uses may sit below their floors.
- Not on the Chile record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 5 registrations in some year, so rarer uses are not shown.
- Not on the Montevideo record for 1940 to 2011: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years.
- Not on the France record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 20 births in some year, so rarer uses are not shown.
- Not on the South Australia record for 1944 to 2017: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years.
- Not on Norway’s list: Statistics Norway lists only first names carried by 200 or more living people, so rarer names are not shown.
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The Hiwa deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Hiwa truly comes from, how it traveled, and what the published record can and cannot tell us, without inventing a curve. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Hiwa fits with your family’s names and surname.
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