Asa
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Asa is a short and strong biblical name of Hebrew origin, meaning "healer"
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Asa is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country. In India it is the 21st most common given name.
- SESweden1 in 275(measured from records)
- TZTanzania≈1 in 211as Asha
- THThailand≈1 in 2.3Kas อุษา
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 Asa 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.
- Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)
- #386 (measured from records)
- 8 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 288 (measured from records)
- 1 in 275 (inferred from the name graph)
≈280,000 named Asha, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Asha in IN India, BD Bangladesh, KE Kenya, อุษา in TH Thailand, Åsa in SE Sweden and Usa in TZ Tanzania.
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)
Asa is a short and strong biblical name of Hebrew origin, meaning "healer". While the most famous biblical Asa was a king of Judah, the name is also associated with this Levite who returned to Jerusalem. It has multicultural appeal, with variations and meanings in Japanese ("morning") and Old Norse.
Sources 1
- Biblical Names Compiled Database
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Asa 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TZ Tanzania | #351 | ≈280,000 est. | ≈1 in 211 | 8 | Usa | 22 |
| SE Sweden | #57 | 37,097 | 1 in 275 | 37K | Åsa | 89 |
| TH Thailand | #360 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | #660,801 | อุษา | 107 |
| BD Bangladesh | #354 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 7K | listed | Asha | 48 |
| KE Kenya | — | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | — | Asha | 13 |
| NP Nepal | — | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Usha | 48 |
| IS Iceland | — | 448 | 1 in 783 | 471 | — | — |
| IN India | #21 | — | — | 723 | Asha | 229 |
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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry); Hagstofa Íslands — Given-name frequency by population (2005). 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)
Asa 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.
The Hebrew name Asa is of uncertain origin, but it is often suggested to mean "healer" or "physician".
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
Uncertain, possibly meaning 'healer' or 'physician' (Aramaic), or 'created' (Hebrew).
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
Asa represents a righteous reformer who restored the covenant but serves as a cautionary tale about the failure to rely on God in times of personal crisis and old age.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
A biblical name implying healing or creation, historically associated with a righteous king of Judah.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
Biblical name, borne by one of the early kings of Judah, who reigned for forty years, as recorded in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles. It was originally a byname meaning ‘doctor’, ‘healer’ in Hebrew, and is still a common Jewish name. It was first used among English-speaking _
as a nameA concise dictionary of first 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)
- Asa Grayb. 1810USAmerican botanist (1810–1888)
- Asa Griggs Candlerb. 1851USAmerican mayor and businessman (1851-1929)
- Al Jolsonb. 1886USnot in their usual nameAmerican entertainer, actor, and singer (1886–1950)
- Asa Philip Randolphb. 1889USBlack American civil rights activist, labor unionist, politician (1889-1979)
- Asa Briggsb. 1921GBEnglish historian (1921-2016)
- Asa Hutchinsonb. 1950USGovernor of Arkansas from 2015 to 2023
- Stina Ekbladb. 1954FInot in their usual nameFinnish-Swedish actress
- Åsa Romsonb. 1972SESwedish politician
- Asa Akirab. 1985USAmerican pornographic actress
- Asa Butterfieldb. 1997GBEnglish actor
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 65 sources across 33 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 42 | #15,371 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 14 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2015 | 12 | — |
| IS Iceland | Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry) | 2026 | 3 | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- Is Asa a male or female name?
- Asa 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 does the name Asa mean, and where does it come from?
- Asa is a short and strong biblical name of Hebrew origin, meaning "healer". Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
- In which country does Asa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 278 thousand people named Asha in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Asa most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Asa is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 275 people — even though Tanzania holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Asa?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 37,097 people named Asa, about 1 in 275 residents.
- How common is Asa compared with other names?
- In Tanzania, Asa is the 351st most common given name of 37,285 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Asa?
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/asaThe 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, “Asa” — the 351st most common given name in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.