Gana
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Aghora (N); GaneSa (N); Krsna (N); Siva (N)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɡɑːnə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gana is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 6.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- BRBrazil1 in 319K
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 12Kas Gani
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 Gana 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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 110 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 6.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈32,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Nigeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Gani in US United States, PK Pakistan, MY Malaysia and 2 more.
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)
Aghora (N); GaneSa (N); Krsna (N); Siva (N)
Sources 1
- Sunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gana 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 | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.6K | listed | Gani | 19 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈3,500 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Gani | 21 |
| US United States | 2,891as Gan | 1 in 115K | 3.5K | Gani | 85 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Gani | 22 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 86K | — | Gani | 21 |
| BR Brazil | 663 | 1 in 319K | 663 | — | — |
| UY Uruguay | 278as Gini | 1 in 12K | 278 | — | — |
| GY Guyana | 58as Gani | 1 in 13K | 58 | — | — |
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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); the african-book-names-hodari-2003 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)
Gana 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.
» a Skandamatrka (M)
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
In Swahili, learner
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
Medicine, my chieftaincy.
as a nameThe African book of names
A Garden
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
troop.
as a nameThe Penguin book of Hindu names for boys
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)
- Idrissa Gueyeb. 1989SNnot in their usual nameSenegalese association football player
- John Gana MuwoNGNigerian 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).
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 47 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 663 | #13,205 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 494 | #46,481 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 422 | #49,723 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 340 | #56,246 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 230 | #31,031 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 48 | #31,031 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2020 | 5 | — |
| NG Nigeria | The African Book of Names (Hodari, 2003) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
| US United States | Baby Names 25,350 (Voight, 2004) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- 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
- What does the name Gana mean, and where does it come from?
- Aghora (N); GaneSa (N); Krsna (N); Siva (N) Recorded by Sunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names.
- How do you pronounce Gana?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡɑːnə/ (IPA) for Arabic.
- Is Gana a male or female name?
- Gana is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Gana have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 32 thousand people named Gana in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gani.
- How common is the name Gana?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 663 people named Gana, about 1 in 319 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Gana?
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/ganaThe 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, “Gana”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.