POPa
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Romanian: definite nominative/accusative singular of popă
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 21 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
POPa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Romania than in any other country, where it is the most common surname.
- RORomania≈1 in 200(inferred from the name graph)
- MDMoldova≈1 in 420few records
- ESSpain1 in 11K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Romania (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 243 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 198 (inferred from the name graph)
≈96,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Romania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)definite nominative/accusative singular of popă
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How POPa is read
(measured from records)POPa is one spelling over 4 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.
- Romanian43%
definite nominative/accusative singular of popă
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English26%
No dictionary in our sources glosses POPa in English.
- French7.2%
third-person singular past historic of poper
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish6.5%
stern, poop (back of a boat or ship)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)POPa 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.
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); the xinhua-italian-manual register; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)POPa 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 fax, a hoopoe, especially a Eurasian hoopoe
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, A priest's assistant (at a sacrifice)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Asturian, stern, poop
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)- Vasko Popab. 1922RSSerbian writer (1922-1991)
- Sorin Popab. 1953RORomanian-American mathematician
- Celestina Popab. 1970RORomanian artistic gymnast
- Constantin Popab. 1971RORomanian basketball player (born 1971)
- Tania Popab. 1973RORomanian stage and film actress
- Marius Popab. 1978RORomanian footballer
- Adrian Popab. 1988RORomanian footballer (born 1988)
- Dorian Popab. 1988RORomanian singer and actor
- Rosemary Popab. 1991AUAustralian and American rower
- Iuliana Popab. 1996RORomanian rower
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)38 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 4.6K | #1,146 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 4.6K | #1,146 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.9K | #10,583 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.8K | #11,428 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.2K | #13,048 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 343 | #1,340 |
| IT Italy | 意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Lietuvių kalbos institutas — Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Lithuanian surname dictionary)
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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 POPa mean, and where does it come from?
- definite nominative/accusative singular of popă Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does POPa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 96 thousand people named POPa in Romania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled POPa.
- How common is the name POPa?
- In Spain, the national register counted 4,607 people named POPa, about 1 in 11 thousand residents.
- How common is POPa compared with other names?
- In Romania, POPa is the most common surname of 78,699 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about POPa?
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/popaThe 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, “POPa” — the most common surname in Romania. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.