Molla

surname · Latin script

Meaning: status name for someone with a qualification in Islamic religious learning, from Persian mulla, a derivative of Arabic mauld, maulwT ‘scholar’ (usually transcribed in English as mullah)

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

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

Molla is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country, where it is the 85th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • BDBangladesh≈1 in 560(inferred from the name graph)
  • ETEthiopia≈1 in 1.3K
  • INIndia1 in 2.2K

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 Molla 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.

India (measured from records)

590,154 people

#485 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
190 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 560 (inferred from the name graph)

Bangladesh, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

MollaLatin(measured from records)
ሞላEthiopic(measured from records)
మలలTelugu(measured from records)

7 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled ሞላ in ET Ethiopia.

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)

status name for someone with a qualification in Islamic religious learning, from Persian mulla, a derivative of Arabic mauld, maulwT ‘scholar’ (usually transcribed in English as mullah).

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Molla 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 Molla is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India#85590,1541 in 2.2K590KMolla117
BD Bangladesh#32≈290,000 est.≈1 in 560—Molla102
ET Ethiopia#33≈86,000 est.≈1 in 1.3Klistedሞላ33
EC Ecuador—7,572as Malla1 in 2.2K7.6K—6
US United States—7,131as Moll1 in 47K7.1KMolla190
BH Bahrain#162≈650 est.≈1 in 2.3K—Molla7

590,154 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INEC — civil registry names. 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)

Molla is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Mollà, Mollá, Mollā

  • Spanish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, Argentina, India, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Mollá, Mollà, Mollã

  • Turkish surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, India, Syria, United States

    Languages: Turkish, Azerbaijani

    Also written Mollá, Mollà, Mollã

  • French surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, India, Spain, Belgium

    Also written Mollá, Mollà

  • Bulgarian surname32 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Bulgaria, Russia, India, Ukraine

    Languages: Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Молла, Mola, Мола, Молья, Mollá

  • Estonian surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States

    Languages: Estonian, Finnish

    Also written Mölla, Mõllá, Mollã, Mollà, Mõllå

36 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)

Molla 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.

  • variant spelling of the habitational name from any of the several places called Mollar in Catalonia and Valencia.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, Archaic form of mullah.

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

  • from a feminine form of Moll.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • unexplained.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Italian, spring (flexible mechanical device; the source of an action)

    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)

1400160018002000Atukuri Molla, b. 1440Pietro Molla, b. 1912Gianna Beretta Molla, b. 1922Jean Molla, b. 1958Shlomo Molla, b. 1965Jordi Mollà, b. 1968Guillem Molla, b. 1977Oleg Molla, b. 1986Solomon Molla, b. 1987Getaneh Tamire, b. 1994

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)

Formalआदरणीय Molla जी,Respected Molla ji, (English)
Informalआदरणीय Molla जी,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 41 sources across 23 countries.

Official registers attesting Molla
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—590K#44
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—1.2K#3,346
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.1K#23,615
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010768#30,420
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000528#39,240
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)20231—
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 6

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 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)
  • 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 Molla mean, and where does it come from?
status name for someone with a qualification in Islamic religious learning, from Persian mulla, a derivative of Arabic mauld, maulwT ‘scholar’ (usually transcribed in English as mullah). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Molla?
A machine transcription gives /moʊɛɫə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
What are other forms of the name Molla?
In the etymology graph, Molleja is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Molla have the most bearers?
In India, the national register counted about 590 thousand people named Molla, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled molla.
How common is the name Molla?
In India, the national register counted 590,154 people named Molla, about 1 in 2.2 thousand residents.
How common is Molla compared with other names?
In India, Molla is the 85th most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Molla?

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

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, “Molla” — the 85th most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Molla parses inside a full name →