Chala
loc · Latin script
Meaning: marijuana
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Chala is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Ethiopia than in any other country.
- ETEthiopia≈1 in 2.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- COColombia≈1 in 10K
- UAUkraine≈1 in 12Kas Чала
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Chala itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Ethiopia (inferred from the name graph)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 107 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈41,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ethiopia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Chile in AR Argentina, CO Colombia, DO Dominican Republic, Чала in UA Ukraine, ጫላ in ET Ethiopia and Chalá in EC Ecuador.
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)
marijuana
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Chala 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ET Ethiopia | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | ጫላ | 24 |
| CO Colombia | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 10K | 5 | Chile | 70 |
| EC Ecuador | 4,286 | 1 in 3.9K | 4.3K | Chalá | 26 |
| UA Ukraine | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Чала | 32 |
| AR Argentina | 2,311as Cala | 1 in 20K | 2.3K | Chile | 29 |
| DO Dominican Republic | ≈820 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Chile | 18 |
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: INEC — civil registry names; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); the co-datosgov-candidates 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)
Chala is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Latin, second-person singular present active imperative of chalō
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Croton scouleri, a tree native to the Galapagos.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Welsh, aspirate mutation of cala
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In pi, fraud, pretext
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Quechua, thin, skinny
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)
- Guido Iván Minda Chaláb. 1960ECEcuadorian Catholic bishop
- Loïc Chalab. 1976FRFrench politician
- Vanessa Fernanda Chala Mindab. 1990ECEcuadorian judoka
- Walter Chaláb. 1992ECEcuadorian association football player
- Jeison Chaláb. 1994ECassociation football player
- Aníbal Chaláb. 1996ECEcuadorian footballer
- Mikael ChalaGBresearcher ORCID ID = 0000-0002-8194-1050
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 37 sources across 20 countries.
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Chala mean, and where does it come from?
- marijuana Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Chala have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 41 thousand people named Chala in Ethiopia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ጫላ.
- How common is the name Chala?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted 4,286 people named Chala in 2024, about 1 in 3.9 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Chala?
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/chalaThe 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, “Chala”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.