Inga
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: perhaps from Sicilian inga ‘ink’, a metonymic occupational name for a scribe
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/iŋɡa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Inga is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Peru than in any other country.
- PEPeru≈1 in 1.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- ECEcuador1 in 2.2K
- ARArgentina1 in 40K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Peru (inferred from the name graph)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 145 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈30,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Peru, 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)
perhaps from Sicilian inga ‘ink’, a metonymic occupational name for a scribe.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
How Inga is read(measured from records)
Inga is one spelling over 2 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.
- Spanish87%
perhaps from Sicilian inga ‘ink’, a metonymic occupational name for a scribe.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
unexplained.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Swedish hypocoristic of names beginning with Ing(wi), a Germanic divine element/name.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
- Danish5.6%
a female given name from Old Norse
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Inga 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PE Peru | #133 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Inga | 83 |
| EC Ecuador | #406 | 7,856 | 1 in 2.2K | 7.9K | Inga | 39 |
| AR Argentina | — | 1,132 | 1 in 40K | 1.1K | Inga | 39 |
| US United States | — | 1,049 | 1 in 317K | 4.2K | Inga | 145 |
| BR Brazil | — | ≈760 est. | ≈1 in 280K | 94 | Inga | 35 |
| LT Lithuania | — | ≈490 est. | ≈1 in 5.6K | 17K | — | 1 |
| MD Moldova | — | ≈330 est. | ≈1 in 10K | 6K | — | 6 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 22K | 1.1K | — | — |
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: Registrų centras — top-50 given names; INEC — civil registry names; e-services.md — living population register; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Hagstofa — population register names 2023; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror). 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)
Inga is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
and use as a girl’s name is in part the Respelled version of the German and result of a regular trend (see for example Scandinavian name Inge, ashort form of Lesley), but it may also have been pIngrid or any of various other names (for influenced by adoption in the Englishexample Ingeborg) based on the name of speaking world of the Spanish name the old Germanic fertility god Ing. pInés.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, Any of the genus Inga of small tropical trees and shrubs.
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Sixto Cajahuaringa Ingab. 1907PEPeruvian writer (1907–2002)
- Torbjørg A. Ingab. 1937NONorwegian author
- Ingrid Ingab. 1949SESwedish politician
- Fernando Castrob. 1954PEnot in their usual namePeruvian boxer
- Leonardo Ingab. 1956PEPeruvian politician
- Zacarías Lapa Ingab. 1968PEPeruvian politician
- María Luisa Silupu Ingab. 1969PEPeruvian politician
- Leonardo Inga Salesb. 1982PEpolitician
- Gladys Doradorb. 1989PEnot in their usual namePeruvian association football player
- Edgard Rimaycunab. 1989PEnot in their usual namePeruvian priest
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 93 sources across 47 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LT Lithuania | Registrų centras — top-50 given names | — | 17K | #47 |
| MD Moldova | e-services.md — living population register | — | 6K | #155 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 4.2K | #4,448 |
| IS Iceland | Hagstofa — population register names 2023 | 2023 | 1.1K | #28 |
| IS Iceland | Hagstofa Íslands — Given-name frequency by population (2005) | 2005 | 1K | #26 |
| IS Iceland | Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry) | 2026 | 1K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 94 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 89 | #43,073 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 84 | #39,406 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 1950 | 21 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 13 | #4,448 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 10 | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Inga mean, and where does it come from?
- perhaps from Sicilian inga ‘ink’, a metonymic occupational name for a scribe. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Inga have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 30 thousand people named Inga in Peru, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled inga.
- How common is the name Inga?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted 7,856 people named Inga in 2024, about 1 in 2.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Inga compared with other names?
- In Peru, Inga is the 133rd most common surname of 173,371 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Inga?
- A machine transcription gives /iŋɡa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What do you want to know about Inga?
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/ingaThe 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, “Inga” — the 133rd most common surname in Peru. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.