Santa
loc · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Ellipsis of Santa Claus
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/sæntə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Santa is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Indonesia than in any other country. In India it is the 65th most common given name.
- CACanada≈1 in 1.8Kas Sandy(inferred from the name graph)
- GTGuatemala≈1 in 1.8Kas Sandy
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 2.4Kas Sandy
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 Santa 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.
- Indonesia (inferred from the name graph)
- #611 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 573 (measured from records)
- 1 in 329 (inferred from the name graph)
≈110,000 named Sandy, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Latvia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Shanti in IN India, ID Indonesia, Sandi in CA Canada, SI Slovenia, Sandy in US United States and סנדי in FR France.
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)
A general of Parakkamabāhu I. He is called Jitagiri, and was in charge of the Vihāravajjasāia ford.’
Sources 1
- Dictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol II (N-H)
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
How Santa is read(measured from records)
Santa 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.
- English14%
Ellipsis of Santa Claus.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish13%
Saint (title), feminine singular of San
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Santa 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | listed | Shanti | 120 |
| US United States | — | 75,709as Sandy | 1 in 4.4K | 69K | Sandy | 573 |
| BD Bangladesh | #308 | ≈47,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.5K | listed | Shanta | 54 |
| FR France | — | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | 16K | סנדי | 8 |
| CA Canada | #869 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | 8 | Sandi | 269 |
| DO Dominican Republic | — | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 520 | 16K | — | 29 |
| BR Brazil | — | 17,650 | 1 in 12K | 23K | — | 6 |
| GT Guatemala | — | ≈9,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Santa | 22 |
| LV Latvia | — | 5,721 | 1 in 329 | 5.7K | Santa | 73 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 2,171as Sandi | 1 in 969 | 2.2K | Sandi | 27 |
| IN India | #65 | — | — | 189K | Shanti | 170 |
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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); JCE — Nombres más registrados (annual); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register); SURS — resident population given 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Santa is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In pi, A general of Parakkamabāhu I. He is called Jitagiri, and was in charge of the Vihāravajjasāia ford.’
as a nameDictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol II (N-H)
In pi, Fifty -seven kappas ago there were four kings of this name, previous births of Tissa Thera.1
as a nameDictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol II (N-H)
Catholic inspiration
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Italian, forma usada antes de nomes de santas
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
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)
- Ferenc Sántab. 1927HUHungarian writer (1927-2008)
- Ferenc Sánta Jr.b. 1945HUHungarian violinist (1945–2024)
- Santa Onob. 1962CACanadian-American immunologist
- Thierry Santab. 1967FRFrench politician
- Santa Scoreseb. 1968ITItalian student and Catholic activist (1968–1991)
- Santa Montefioreb. 1970GBBritish author
- Natalia Santab. 1977COColombian film director
- Carlos Santab. 1978DOathletics competitor
- Inés Melchorb. 1986PEnot in their usual namePeruvian long-distance runner
- Santa Dimopulosb. 1987UAUkrainian singer
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 89 sources across 43 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 23K | #1,275 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 18K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 18K | #1,152 |
| DO Dominican Republic | JCE — Nombres más registrados (annual) | 2025 | 16K | #11 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 9.7K | #2,443 |
| LV Latvia | PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register) | — | 5.7K | — |
| LV Latvia | PMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup) | — | 5.7K | #83 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.7K | #11,493 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.4K | #12,466 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.1K | #13,522 |
| DO Dominican Republic | Dominican Republic — Nombres más comunes registrados 2022-2023 | 2023 | 997 | #5 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 481 | #2,443 |
Reference works 8
- 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)
- 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
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
- 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
- Where does the name Santa come from?
- A general of Parakkamabāhu I. He is called Jitagiri, and was in charge of the Vihāravajjasāia ford.’ Recorded by Dictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol II (N-H).
- How common is the name Santa?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 17,650 people named Santa in 2022, about 1 in 12 thousand residents.
- How common is Santa compared with other names?
- In India, Santa is the 65th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Santa?
- A machine transcription gives /sæntə/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Santa mean?
- In English, Ellipsis of Santa Claus.
- In which country does Santa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 112 thousand people named Sandy in Indonesia, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Santa most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Santa is densest in Latvia — about 1 in 329 people — even though Indonesia holds more of our records for it.
What do you want to know about Santa?
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/santaThe 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, “Santa” — the 65th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.