Inga

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Inga is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Peru than in any other country. In Spanish, recorded as perhaps from Sicilian inga ‘ink’, a metonymic occupational name for a scribe.

rarermore common
  • PEPeru≈1 in 1.1K(inferred from the name graph)
  • ECEcuador1 in 2.2K
  • ARArgentina1 in 40K

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.

Peru (inferred from the name graph)

≈30,000 people, est.

4 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
145 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.1K (inferred from the name graph)

Peru, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

IngaLatin(measured from records)
ԻնգաArmenian(measured from records)
ინგაGeorgian(measured from records)
ΙνγκαGreek(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)

perhaps from Sicilian inga ‘ink’, a metonymic occupational name for a scribe.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.

How Inga is read(measured from records)

Inga is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.

  • Spanish87%

    perhaps from Sicilian inga ‘ink’, a metonymic occupational name for a scribe.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

    unexplained.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

    Swedish hypocoristic of names beginning with Ing(wi), a Germanic divine element/name.

    as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios

  • Danish5.6%

    a female given name from Old Norse

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Inga 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.

Where Inga is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
PE Peru#133≈30,000 est.≈1 in 1.1K—Inga83
EC Ecuador#4067,8561 in 2.2K7.9KInga39
AR Argentina—1,1321 in 40K1.1KInga39
US United States—1,0491 in 317K4.2KInga145
BR Brazil—≈760 est.≈1 in 280K94Inga35
LT Lithuania—≈490 est.≈1 in 5.6K17K—1
MD Moldova—≈330 est.≈1 in 10K6K—6
IS Iceland—≈16 est.≈1 in 22K1.1K——

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: Registrų centras — top-50 given names; INEC — civil registry names; e-services.md — living population register; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Hagstofa — population register names 2023; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Inga is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Peru, Germany, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, German

    Also written Ïnga, Ingä, Ingá, Ingã, In-Ga

  • Russian given name33 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Türkiye

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian

    Also written Инга, Інга, 'Inga, Інґа, Įńgã

  • Swedish surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark

    Languages: Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian

    Also written Ingá

  • Finnish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, Peru, Sweden, United States

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Inkoo, Ingä, Ingá

  • Romanian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, United States, Spain, Latvia

    Also written Ĩňğă, Ingá

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Ingá

72 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Inga is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • and use as a girl’s name is in part the Respelled version of the German and result of a regular trend (see for example Scandinavian name Inge, ashort form of Lesley), but it may also have been pIngrid or any of various other names (for influenced by adoption in the Englishexample Ingeborg) based on the name of speaking world of the Spanish name the old Germanic fertility god Ing. pInés.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In English, Any of the genus Inga of small tropical trees and shrubs.

    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)

190019502000Sixto Cajahuaringa Inga, b. 1907Torbjørg A. Inga, b. 1937Ingrid Inga, b. 1949Fernando Castro, b. 1954Leonardo Inga, b. 1956Zacarías Lapa Inga, b. 1968María Luisa Silupu Inga, b. 1969Leonardo Inga Sales, b. 1982Gladys Dorador, b. 1989Edgard Rimaycuna, b. 1989

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 93 sources across 47 countries.

Official registers attesting Inga
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names20247.9K#534
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—1.1K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.1K#24,236
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101K#24,031
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000613#34,856
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)202466—

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • 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

What does the name Inga mean, and where does it come from?
perhaps from Sicilian inga ‘ink’, a metonymic occupational name for a scribe. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does Inga have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 30 thousand people named Inga in Peru, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled inga.
How common is the name Inga?
In Ecuador, the national register counted 7,856 people named Inga in 2024, about 1 in 2.2 thousand residents.
How common is Inga compared with other names?
In Peru, Inga is the 133rd most common surname of 173,371 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Inga?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/inga

The same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Inga” — the 133rd most common surname in Peru. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Inga parses inside a full name →