Asha
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Life
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Asha 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.
- TZTanzania≈1 in 211(inferred from the name graph)
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 7K
- SESweden1 in 275as Åsa
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 Asha 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 211 (inferred from the name graph)
≈280,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Tanzania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Åsa in SE Sweden, NO Norway, อุษา in TH Thailand, Usa in TZ Tanzania and Usha in NP Nepal.
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)
Life
Sources 1
- The book of African names
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Asha 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 | 37,097as Åsa | 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 | — | 448as Ása | 1 in 783 | 471 | — | — |
| NO Norway | — | 249 | 1 in 22K | 2.4K | Åsa | 20 |
| 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; SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); 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)
Asha 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.
She is Ufe
as a nameThe book of African names
In Swedish, Asha kan ha sitt ursprung i hindi eller sanskrit, med betydelsen ’hopp; liv’. Det kan också vara en form av → Aisha, använd bl.a. på swahili.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Sanskrit: ‘hope’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
living
as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names
In English, A female given name from Sanskrit used in India.
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)
- Asha Bhosleb. 1933INIndian playback singer (1933–2026)
- Asha Parekhb. 1942INIndian actress
- Asha Puthlib. 1945INIndian singer
- Asha-Rose Mtengeti Migirob. 1956TZTanzanian politician and UN Deputy-Secretary General
- Asha Haji Elmib. 1962SOMember of Federal Parliament; peace activist
- Asha Sainib. 1978INIndian actress
- Asha de Vosb. 1979LKmarine biologist
- Asha Negib. 1989INIndian television actress
- Asha Philipb. 1990GBBritish sprinter
- Asha MagratiNPNepalese 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 75 sources across 41 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 691 | #2,199 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 634 | #2,152 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 631 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 249 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2017 | 23 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navn (1880–present) | 2007 | 5 | — |
| IS Iceland | Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry) | 2026 | 1 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2017 | 1 | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name 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
- Is Asha a male or female name?
- Asha 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 Asha mean, and where does it come from?
- Life Recorded by The book of African names.
- In which country does Asha have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 278 thousand people named Asha in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled usa.
- What are other forms of the name Asha?
- In the etymology graph, Eshe is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Asha?
- In Norway, the national register counted 249 people named Asha in 2025, about 1 in 22 thousand residents.
- How common is Asha compared with other names?
- In Tanzania, Asha is the 351st most common given name of 37,285 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Asha?
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/ashaThe 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, “Asha” — the 351st most common given name in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.