Ismaila
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Ishmael
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɪsmeɪɫə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ismaila is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- GMGambia≈1 in 371(inferred from the name graph)
- SNSenegal≈1 in 549
- NGNigeria≈1 in 1.3K
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)
- Sources
- 5 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 371 (inferred from the name graph)
≈160,000 people, est.
Community-sourced
Gambia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Ishmael
Sources 1
- African Muslim Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ismaila 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.
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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; the ng-naijafaker register; DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024); IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 2022; 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Mabo Ismailab. 1944NGNigerian association football manager
- Ismaila Lassissib. 1969CIIvorian rugby union player
- Ismaïla N'Diayeb. 1988SNFrench-Senegalese footballer
- Ismaila Jomeb. 1994GMGambia association football player
- Ismaïla Sarrb. 1998SNSenegalese association football player (born 1998)
- Ismaila Coulibalyb. 2000MLMalian association football player
- Ismaila ShittuNGresearcher
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 38 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 527 | #4,404 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 424 | #2,367 |
| SN Senegal | DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024) | 2024 | 13 | #58 |
| GM Gambia | IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 2022 | 2022 | 2 | #10 |
| ML Mali | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 1 | #239 |
| NG Nigeria | naija-faker — Nigerian Given Names by Ethnicity (Hausa/Igbo/Yoruba) | — | — | — |
| NG Nigeria | Nigerian names by ethnicity (naijafaker, MIT) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname 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 Ismaila mean, and where does it come from?
- Ishmael Recorded by African Muslim Names.
- How do you pronounce Ismaila?
- A machine transcription gives /ɪsmeɪɫə/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Ismaila a male or female name?
- Ismaila 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.
- In which country does Ismaila have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 165 thousand people named Ismaila in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ismaila.
- How common is the name Ismaila?
- In Spain, the national register counted 527 people named Ismaila, about 1 in 95 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Ismaila?
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/ismailaThe 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, “Ismaila”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.