Madara

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Madara is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Kenya than in any other country. Recorded meaning: topographic name from medieval Greek madara, feminine of madaros ‘bald’, in Ancient Greek also ‘humid’, ‘wet’, or from a byname, Madaras, from the same word with the suffix -as.

rarermore common
  • INIndia1 in 4.9M(measured from records)
  • KEKenya≈1 in 56K
  • LVLatvia≈1 in 132K

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)

≈950 people, est.

Sources
22 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 56K (inferred from the name graph)

Kenya, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

topographic name from medieval Greek madara, feminine of madaros ‘bald’, in Ancient Greek also ‘humid’, ‘wet’, or from a byname, Madaras, from the same word with the suffix -as.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Madara 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 Madara is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
KE Kenya≈950 est.≈1 in 56K—Madara3
PH Philippines≈720 est.≈1 in 152K—Madara6
US United States7151 in 465K754Madara17
NG Nigeria≈470 est.≈1 in 451K—Madara2
IN India2731 in 4.9M273Madara22
GB United Kingdom≈160 est.≈1 in 402Klisted—15
LV Latvia≈14 est.≈1 in 132K5.4KMadara15

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: PMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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)

Madara is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, United Kingdom, India

    Also written Madará

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Mādāra

  • French surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Philippines

    Also written Mådãrà, Mädära, Maͥdaͣrͫa, Mádara, Madarâ

  • Japanese surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Japan, Philippines, India, Malaysia

    Also written Madàra, Màdàrà, Màdarà

57 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)

Madara 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.

  • In Irish, alternative form of madra (“dog”)

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

  • In Latvian, madder, bedstraw (a type of flowering plant, Rubia tinctorum)

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

  • In Hungarian, third-person singular single-possession possessive of madár

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

  • In bik, to be swayed (by other's opinion)

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

  • In Turkish, bad, foul, unlikable

    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)

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 34 sources across 18 countries.

Official registers attesting Madara
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020754#32,654
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010715#32,236
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000655#32,984
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—273#14,302
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—134#18,628
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 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 Madara mean, and where does it come from?
topographic name from medieval Greek madara, feminine of madaros ‘bald’, in Ancient Greek also ‘humid’, ‘wet’, or from a byname, Madaras, from the same word with the suffix -as. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does Madara have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 950 people named Madara in Kenya, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled madara.
How common is the name Madara?
In the United States, the national register counted 715 people named Madara in 2010, about 1 in 465 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Madara?

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

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, “Madara”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Madara parses inside a full name →