Precious
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from Lat Preciosa ‘of great value’, used as a woman’s name; first attested Preciosa 1203 Cur (Herts)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/pɹɛʃəs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Precious is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 656(inferred from the name graph)
- ZMZambia≈1 in 773
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 1.1K
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 353 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 409 (inferred from the name graph)
≈330,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Malawi, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Lat Preciosa ‘of great value’, used as a woman’s name; first attested Preciosa 1203 Cur (Herts)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Precious 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #153 | ≈330,000 est. | ≈1 in 656 | — | Precious | 130 |
| ZA South Africa | #138 | ≈52,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | listed | Precious | 77 |
| MW Malawi | #111 | ≈52,000 est. | ≈1 in 409 | — | Precious | 18 |
| ZM Zambia | #246 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 773 | 6 | Precious | 29 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Precious | 23 |
| US United States | — | 15,863 | 1 in 21K | 16K | Precious | 353 |
| GH Ghana | #173 | ≈7,900 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | — | Precious | 55 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; the za-statssa-births register; ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections — candidate results. 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)
Precious 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 English, for a valued member of the community (perhaps some/times used ironically), from ME, OF precios (LL pretiosus, a deriv. of pretium price, prize). It may also derive from a medieval female given name, originally an affection¬ ate nickname. Var.: Pretious. Cogns.: Jewish (Sefardic): Preciado (ornamental); Pers(s)iado (hypercorrected forms).
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, Pretorius see Praetorius for a valued member of the community (perhaps some¬ times used ironically), from ME, OF precios (hh pretiosus, a deriv. of pretium price, prize). It may also derive from a medieval female given name, originally an affectionate nickname.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, Of high value or worth.
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)
- Precious Bryantb. 1942USAmerican musician
- Precious Adamsb. 1950USAmerican ballet dancer
- Precious Wilsonb. 1957JMJamaican singer
- Precious Moloi-Motsepeb. 1964ZASouth African fashionista
- Precious Chongb. 1968CACanadian actress
- Precious Dedeb. 1980NGNigerian association football player
- Precious Lara Quigamanb. 1983PHFilipina beauty pageant titleholder
- Precious Makgaretsab. 1986ZASouth African actress
- Precious Mustaphab. 1997GBactress
- Precious Achiuwab. 1999NGNigerian basketball player (born 1999)
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 60 sources across 35 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 16K | #1,836 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 328 | #1,836 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 51 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2023 | 6 | — |
| ZM Zambia | ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections — candidate results | 2021 | 6 | #39 |
| ZA South Africa | Stats SA — Recorded Live Births (P0305): top-10 baby forenames & surnames | 2024 | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Precious mean, and where does it come from?
- from Lat Preciosa ‘of great value’, used as a woman’s name; first attested Preciosa 1203 Cur (Herts) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Precious?
- A machine transcription gives /pɹɛʃəs/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Precious a male or female name?
- Precious is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Precious?
- In the etymology graph, Praise is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Precious have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 326 thousand people named Precious in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled precious.
- How common is the name Precious?
- In the United States, the national register counted 15,863 people named Precious in 2020, about 1 in 21 thousand residents.
- How common is Precious compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Precious is the 153rd most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Precious?
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/preciousThe 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, “Precious” — the 153rd most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.