あ
given name · Japanese script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
あ is a given name written in the Japanese script, with more bearers in Japan than in any other country, where it is the 21st most common given name.
- JPJapan≈1 in 877(inferred from the name graph)
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 10M
carrying the name, as Mondonomo estimates it from our sources: no national register counts it in these countries. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Japan (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 31 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 877 (inferred from the name graph)
≈140,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Japan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
あ 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JP Japan | #21 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 877 | listed | あ | 31 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈11 est. | ≈1 in 10M | — | あ | 5 |
| CN China | — | — | — | — | あ | 6 |
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: the jp-enamdict register. 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)
あ is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In ryu, I; first-person pronoun
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 1 sources across 1 country.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JP Japan | ENAMDICT/JMnedict — name readings | — | — | — |
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Is あ a male or female name?
- あ is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does あ have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 143 thousand people named あ in Japan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled あ.
- How common is the name あ?
- Mondonomo estimates about 140,000 people in Japan have あ as their first given name, about 1 in 877 residents. No national register counts it there; the figure is ours, calibrated against the registers that do.
- How common is あ compared with other names?
- In Japan, あ is the 21st most common given name of 366,905 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about あ?
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/%E3%81%82The 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, “あ” — the 21st most common given name in Japan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.