Amaia is a Basque name that means "the end", after the mountain and village of Amaya in northern Spain; it was popularized by the 19th-century novel Amaya, in which it names the last of a line. The same spelling exists as a Japanese name, usually read as "night rain". In the United States Amaia climbed from number 2857 in 2000 into the top 1000 in 2018 and reaches number 555 among girls' names in 2025, its best rank yet.