Ananias
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Portuguese: Ananias (any of several New Testament characters)
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 28 countries · latest register: ECN Government Gazette 8791, 2025
/a.naˈni.as/(recorded in a dictionary) Portuguese · from Wiktionary
Ananias is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country.
- NANamibia≈1 in 5.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- PEPeru≈1 in 11K
- BRBrazil1 in 14K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 107 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.9K (inferred from the name graph)
14,670 people, 2022
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Mozambique, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Ananias is a biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning "God has been gracious." In the New Testament, it is the name of three individuals, most notably a member of the early church whose story in the Book of Acts serves as a cautionary tale about the importance of honesty.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Biblical Names Compiled Database
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Ananias is read
(measured from records)Ananias is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Portuguese56%
Ananias (any of several New Testament characters)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish29%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Ananias in Spanish.
- English8.7%
In the New Testament, any of certain members of the early Christian church.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Ananias counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | #906 | 14,670 | 1 in 14K | 19K | Ananias | 107 |
| MZ Mozambique | #174 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | — | Ananias | 11 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈5,200 est. | ≈1 in 22K | listed | Ananias | 17 |
| PE Peru | — | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Ananias | 28 |
| AO Angola | — | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 18K | 1 | Ananias | 16 |
| NA Namibia | — | ≈540 est. | ≈1 in 5.6K | 5 | — | 6 |
14,670 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; ECN Government Gazette 8791 — 2025 local authority candidates. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Ananias is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Ananias is a biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning "God has been gracious." In the New Testament, it is the name of three individuals, most notably a member of the early church whose story in the Book of Acts serves as a cautionary tale about the importance of honesty.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
The name Ananias is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Hananiah (חֲנַנְיָה), which means "Yahweh has been gracious" or "God has favored". It is a theophoric name combining the Hebrew root 'hanan' (to be gracious) with 'Yah,' a shortened form of God's name, Yahweh.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
In the Christian narrative of the New Testament, Ananias represents the corrupt and hostile religious establishment that opposed the early church. His command to have Paul struck unlawfully during a trial highlights the injustice faced by early Christians from the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
graça de Deus; Greece
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Ananias Charles Littletonb. 1886USAmerican accounting scholar (1886-1974)
- Ananias Eloi Castro Monteirob. 1989BRBrazilian footballer (1989-2016)
- Jonah Ayungab. 1997GBnot in their usual nameKenyan association football player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)52 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 28 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Ananias come from?
- Ananias is a biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning "God has been gracious." In the New Testament, it is the name of three individuals, most notably a member of the early church whose story in the Boo… Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
- Is Ananias a male or female name?
- Ananias is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: Brazil (IBGE), United States (Census Bureau, 2020) and Finland (DVV).
- What are other forms of the name Ananias?
- In the etymology graph, Chananya, Hananiah and Chananyah are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Ananias?
- It depends on the language: in Portuguese /a.naˈni.as/ (Wiktionary); in Spanish /ananjas/; in English /ænəˈnaɪəs/ (Wiktionary). Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- What does the name Ananias mean?
- In Portuguese, Ananias (any of several New Testament characters)
- Which countries have the most people named Ananias?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 15 thousand people named Ananias, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ananias. After it come Mozambique, Philippines, Peru and Angola; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Ananias?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 14,670 people named Ananias in 2022, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
- How common is Ananias compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Ananias is the 906th most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ananias?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ananiasThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Ananias” — the 906th most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.