Naja
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Somali/Muslim: 'success'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/nəʒə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Naja is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 268K(measured from records)
- SISlovenia1 in 1.7K
- DKDenmark1 in 1.7K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Denmark (measured from records)
- Sources
- 203 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.7K (inferred from the name graph)
3,359 people
Highest-authority source
Slovenia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Somali/Muslim: 'success'
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Naja 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.
3,359 people counted by Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name 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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); SURS — resident population given names; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021); PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register); PMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup). 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)
Naja 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 German, aus Grönland entlehnter wdbl. Vom. mit der Bedeutung »kleine Schwester«.
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In Russian, var of Nadzha.
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
In tut-pro, to envy, wish
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In German, (oh) well
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German
In Italian, alternative form of naia (“compulsory military conscription”)
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)
- Naja Saltob. 1945DKDanish textile artist
- Naja Lyberthb. 1962GLpsychologist in Greenland
- Naja Marie Aidtb. 1963GLDanish-language poet and writer (born 1963)
- Naja Abelsenb. 1964DKDanish-Greenlandic painter and illustrator
- Naja Kristensenb. 1968GLGreenlandic politician
- Naja Holten Møllerb. 1978Danish rower
- Naja Rosab. 1980DKDanish singer-songwriter
- Naja Mohamedb. 1996EGbadminton player
- Naja Bahrenscheerb. 1996DKDanish association football player
- Naja Hulvej Rodb. 2000DKresearcher
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 63 sources across 35 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 3.4K | #177 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 1.3K | #338 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2025 | 1.2K | #179 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.2K | #10,646 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 338 | #18,306 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 309 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 300 | #18,657 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present) | 2018 | 156 | #44 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 88 | #9,306 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 1990 | 74 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 65 | #10,646 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 64 | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
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 Naja mean, and where does it come from?
- Somali/Muslim: 'success' Recorded by African Names.
- How do you pronounce Naja?
- A machine transcription gives /nəʒə/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Naja a male or female name?
- Naja is a female 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 Naja have the most bearers?
- In Denmark, the national register counted about 3.4 thousand people named Naja, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Naja most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Naja is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 1.7 thousand people — even though Denmark holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Naja?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 3,359 people named Naja, about 1 in 1.7 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Naja?
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/najaThe 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, “Naja”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.