Loya

surname · Latin script

Meaning: habitational name from Loya in Navarra, Basque Country

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/loja/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Loya is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Mozambique it is the 95th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 27K(measured from records)
  • CACanada≈1 in 43K
  • CUCuba≈1 in 4.3K

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.

United States (measured from records)

12,232 people, 2010

Sources
298 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 4.3K (inferred from the name graph)

Cuba, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

habitational name from Loya in Navarra, Basque Country.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Where in the world(measured from records)

Loya 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.

Where Loya is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—12,2321 in 27K12KLoya298
CU Cuba#175≈2,600 est.≈1 in 4.3K—Loya3
AO Angola—≈1,500 est.≈1 in 21K—Loya5
IN India—1,0061 in 1.3M1KLoya42
CA Canada—≈890 est.≈1 in 43K1Loya24
GT Guatemala—≈840 est.≈1 in 20K—Loya7
CV Cape Verde#762≈80 est.≈1 in 7.3K—Loya2
MZ Mozambique#95———Loya1

12,232 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Loya is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Loyá

  • Swahili surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Canada, Tanzania, India

    Also written Loy-A

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, Canada, Philippines

    Also written Loy-A

53 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Loya 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.

  • In zlm, squeamish feeling; inclination to vomit

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

  • In tpi, lawyer

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In ng, soil

    as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003

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)

19201940196019802000Arieh R. Loya, b. 1925La Consentida, b. 1941Yossi Loya, b. 1942Fabiola Loya Hernández, b. 1974Consuelo Argüelles Loya, b. 1977Oscar Loya, b. 1979Karen Loya, b. 1993

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)

FormalEstimado/a Loya,Dear Loya, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Loya,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 31 sources across 17 countries.

Official registers attesting Loya
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201012K#2,931
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202012K#2,930
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020009.9K#3,309
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—1.2K#3,166
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—1K#5,449
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia surname 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 Loya mean, and where does it come from?
habitational name from Loya in Navarra, Basque Country. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Loya?
A machine transcription gives /loja/ (IPA) for Spanish.
In which country does Loya have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 12 thousand people named Loya, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled loya.
How common is the name Loya?
In the United States, the national register counted 12,232 people named Loya in 2010, about 1 in 27 thousand residents.
How common is Loya compared with other names?
In Mozambique, Loya is the 95th most common surname of 2,021 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Loya?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/loya

The 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, “Loya” — the 95th most common surname in Mozambique. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Loya parses inside a full name →