Dia
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in French: yah!, cry to make (a) working animal(s) etc. advance or turn left
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/dja/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Dia is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Senegal than in any other country, where it is the 12th most common surname.
- SNSenegal≈1 in 105(inferred from the name graph)
- FRFrance≈1 in 10K
- MRMauritania≈1 in 1.7K
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.
- Senegal (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 243 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 105 (inferred from the name graph)
≈150,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Senegal, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
West African: 'champion.' Also a Swahili word meaning 'ransom, compensation.'
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 25 languages in the etymology graph.
How Dia is read(measured from records)
Dia is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- French49%
yah!, cry to make (a) working animal(s) etc. advance or turn left
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English14%
A language spoken in Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish12%
misspelling of día
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Dia 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SN Senegal | #12 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 105 | 85 | Dia | 77 |
| BR Brazil | — | 7,444 | 1 in 28K | 7.4K | — | — |
| FR France | #590 | ≈6,600 est. | ≈1 in 10K | 535 | Dia | 243 |
| MR Mauritania | #6 | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Dia | 27 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Dia | 37 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024). 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)
Dia is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
West African: 'champion.' Also a Swahili word meaning 'ransom, compensation.'
as a nameAfrican Names
Champion
as a nameThe book of African names
West Africa
as a nameAfrican Names
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)
- Omar Diab. 1955SNSenegalese basketball player
- Ali Diab. 1965SNSenegalese footballer
- Mohamed Diab. 1973MLFranco-Malian fashion designer
- Tidiane Diab. 1985SNSenegalese footballer
- Issiar Diab. 1987FRSenegalese and French footballer
- Papa Diab. 1987SNSenegalese basketball player (born 1987)
- Waly Diab. 1988FRFrench comedian
- Amadou Diab. 1993FRFrench association football player
- Boulaye Diab. 1996FRSenegalese and French footballer
- Sanda Diab. 1998BEBelgian student who died during a student baptism
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 79 sources across 46 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 42 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 30 | #74,979 |
| SN Senegal | DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024) | 2024 | 4 | #67 |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- Where does the name Dia come from?
- West African: 'champion.' Also a Swahili word meaning 'ransom, compensation.' Recorded by African Names.
- What does the name Dia mean?
- In French, yah!, cry to make (a) working animal(s) etc. advance or turn left
- In which country does Dia have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 150 thousand people named Dia in Senegal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dia.
- How do you pronounce Dia?
- A machine transcription gives /dja/ (IPA) for French.
- How common is the name Dia?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 7,444 people named Dia, about 1 in 28 thousand residents.
- How common is Dia compared with other names?
- In Senegal, Dia is the 12th most common surname of 3,622 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Dia?
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/diaThe 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, “Dia” — the 12th most common surname in Senegal. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.