Baya
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Swahili: bad, evil
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɓaja/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Baya is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Kenya than in any other country.
- KEKenya≈1 in 3.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 17K
- TNTunisia≈1 in 13K
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.
- Kenya (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 101 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈14,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Kenya, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Ploceus philippinus, a weaverbird of southern Asia.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Baya is read(measured from records)
Baya is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 4 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.
- Swahili54%
bad, evil
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English12%
Ploceus philippinus, a weaverbird of southern Asia.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Bantu people
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Spanish9.5%
berry (a small fruit)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French8.9%
third-person singular past historic of bayer
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Hindi5.1%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Baya in Hindi.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Baya 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KE Kenya | #185 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.8K | 3 | Baya | 32 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈6,400 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Baya | 30 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | — | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 38K | 1 | — | 13 |
| MA Morocco | — | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 22K | listed | Baya | 24 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 38K | — | Baya | 12 |
| TN Tunisia | — | ≈900 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Baya | 11 |
| ES Spain | — | 397 | 1 in 126K | 397 | — | 17 |
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: Mzalendo Trust "Elections Watch" — 2022 gazetted election winners; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Baya is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
ugly
as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of 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)
- Raymond Ramazani Bayab. 1943CDCongolese politician (1943–2019)
- Abdennour Bayab. 1958DZAlgerian association football player
- Zoubeir Bayab. 1971TNTunisian association football player
- Terence Bayab. 1998FRFrench professional footballer
- Paulo Bayab. 1999BRBrazilian association football player
- Benoît Badiashileb. 2001FRnot in their usual nameFrench footballer (born 2001)
- Kara BayaDZAlgerian politician
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)
Attested in 57 sources across 30 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 397 | #9,619 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 397 | #9,598 |
| KE Kenya | Mzalendo Trust "Elections Watch" — 2022 gazetted election winners | 2022 | 3 | #49 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 1 | #106 |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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
- How do you pronounce Baya?
- A machine transcription gives /ɓaja/ (IPA) for Swahili.
- What does the name Baya mean?
- In Swahili, bad, evil
- Where does the name Baya come from?
- Ploceus philippinus, a weaverbird of southern Asia. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Baya have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 14 thousand people named Baya in Kenya, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled baya.
- How common is the name Baya?
- In Spain, the national register counted 397 people named Baya, about 1 in 126 thousand residents.
- How common is Baya compared with other names?
- In Kenya, Baya is the 185th most common surname of 179,147 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Baya?
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/bayaThe 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, “Baya” — the 185th most common surname in Kenya. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.