Emeka
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Great deed
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɛməkə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Emeka is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country, where it is the 79th most common given name.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 642(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 85K
- USUnited States1 in 282K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 271 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 642 (inferred from the name graph)
≈330,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nigeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Great deed.
Sources 1
- The African book of names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Emeka 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 | #79 | ≈330,000 est. | ≈1 in 642 | listed | Emeka | 151 |
| CM Cameroon | #818 | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Emeka | 7 |
| US United States | — | 1,180 | 1 in 282K | 1.1K | Emeka | 271 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 51K | — | Emeka | 31 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈780 est. | ≈1 in 85K | listed | Emeka | 127 |
| GY Guyana | — | 13 | 1 in 58K | 13 | — | 1 |
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: the african-book-names-hodari-2003 register; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; the gb-nisra-baby-names-ni register; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Emeka 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.
In mch, to have children one after the other
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)
- Emeka Anyaokub. 1933NGNigerian chief and diplomat
- Emeka Enejereb. 1944NGNigerian academic and political scientist
- Emeka Ezeugob. 1965NGNigerian footballer
- Emeka Ifejiagwab. 1977NGNigerian footballer
- Emeka Okaforb. 1982USAmerican basketball player (born 1982)
- Emeka Oparab. 1984NGNigerian footballer
- Emeka Ezeb. 1992NGNigerian association football player
- Emeka Enelib. 1999USAmerican soccer player
- Richard Emeka Fridayb. 2000NGNigerian association football player
- Emeka Basilb. 2001NGNigerian association football player (2001-)
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 41 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.1K | #11,031 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 60 | #11,031 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2004 | 16 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1991 | 16 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1998 | 15 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1994 | 15 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1983 | 15 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1978 | 14 | — |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 13 | #581 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2023 | 13 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2013 | 13 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 9 | — |
Reference works 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Emeka mean, and where does it come from?
- Great deed. Recorded by The African book of names.
- How do you pronounce Emeka?
- A machine transcription gives /ɛməkə/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Emeka a male or female name?
- Emeka is a male 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 Emeka?
- In the etymology graph, Chuks is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Emeka have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 333 thousand people named Emeka in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled emeka.
- How common is the name Emeka?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,180 people named Emeka in 2020, about 1 in 282 thousand residents.
- How common is Emeka compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Emeka is the 79th most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Emeka?
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/emekaThe 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, “Emeka” — the 79th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.