Sayuri is a Japanese name usually written with characters that mean "small lily", from sa, small, and yuri, lily. American readers know it as the heroine of Arthur Golden's novel Memoirs of a Geisha, filmed in 2005, which lifted the name here. Sayuri rose from number 7957 in the United States in 2000 to number 1953 in 2007, its best rank, and stands at number 2380 among girls' names in 2025.