Surya is a Sanskrit name meaning 'sun' and is also the name of the Hindu sun deity.
Surya comes directly from Sanskrit, where sūrya simply means "the sun." It is one of the oldest personal names in human linguistic history, appearing in the Rigveda — among the earliest texts in any Indo-European language — as the name of the solar deity who drives his chariot across the sky, illuminating and sustaining all life. The root is cognate with the Latin sol and the Greek helios through Proto-Indo-European sóh₂wl, making Surya a linguistic sibling of "solar" itself.
In Hindu tradition, Surya is one of the principal Adityas, the divine solar lords, and is counted among the Navagraha — the nine celestial influences that govern human destiny in Vedic astrology. The Surya Namaskar (Sun Salutation), a sequence of yoga postures performed at dawn, is offered in his honor and remains one of the most widely practiced physical and spiritual rituals on earth. Ancient temples dedicated to Surya, most magnificently the 13th-century Konark Sun Temple in Odisha with its colossal stone chariot wheels, stand as testament to the depth of his veneration.
As a given name, Surya is used across South and Southeast Asia — in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Bali — for both boys and girls, though in India it leans masculine and in some Southeast Asian communities it is gender-neutral or feminine. It has grown in appeal among diaspora communities globally, valued for its brevity, its luminous meaning, and its phonetic accessibility to non-South Asian speakers. To name a child Surya is to invoke warmth, clarity, and the life-giving power at the center of the solar system.