Sha

surname · Latin script

Meaning: The letter Ш, ш

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

/ʃa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Sha is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • PKPakistan≈1 in 12K(inferred from the name graph)
  • INIndia1 in 958K
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 6.6K

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.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈120,000 people, est.

Sources
135 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 6.6K (inferred from the name graph)

Malaysia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

The letter Ш, ш.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Sha 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 Sha is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈120,000 est.≈1 in 11K—Sha6
PK Pakistan#257≈19,000 est.≈1 in 12K—Sha36
NG Nigeria—≈5,700 est.≈1 in 37K—Sha9
MY Malaysia—≈5,000 est.≈1 in 6.6K—Sha24
IN India—1,3841 in 958K1.4KSha135
SG Singapore—≈490 est.≈1 in 13K—Sha17

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. 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)

Sha is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname48 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Sha', Shà, Sha’, Shá, Shä

  • Chinese surname3 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Shā, Sha'

  • Arabic surname146 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, Kuwait

    Also written Shä, Shã, Shâ, Šhä, Shà

  • Indonesian surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, United States

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Sha', Sĥã, Shå, Šhã, Śha

  • French surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, China

    Also written Sha', Shâ, Shà, Shã, Shä

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)

Sha 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 Japanese, The hiragana syllable しゃ (sha) or the katakana syllable シャ (sha) in Hepburn romanization.

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

  • ISO 639-3 language code for Shall-Zwall.

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

  • In lou, cat (an animal of the family Felidae)

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

  • In Chinese, nonstandard spelling of shā

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

  • In French, abbreviation of Shawinigan

    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)

1900195020002050Sha Menghai, b. 1900Sha Wenhan, b. 1908Sha Yexin, b. 1939Sha Zukang, b. 1947Sha Baoliang, b. 1972Sha Yi, b. 1978Sha Yibo, b. 1991Sha Xingyu, b. 1994Sha Tzu-chen, b. 2003

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)

Formalआदरणीय Sha जी,Respected Sha ji, (English)
Informalआदरणीय Sha जी,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 40 sources across 21 countries.

Official registers attesting Sha
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—1.5K#414
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—1.4K#4,247

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • 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

How do you pronounce Sha?
A machine transcription gives /ʃa/ (IPA) for Hindi.
What does the name Sha mean, and where does it come from?
The letter Ш, ш. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Sha have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 125 thousand people named Sha in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sha.
How common is the name Sha?
In India, the national register counted 1,384 people named Sha, about 1 in 958 thousand residents.
How common is Sha compared with other names?
In Pakistan, Sha is the 257th most common surname of 51,489 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Sha?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

The 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, “Sha” — the 257th most common surname in Pakistan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Sha parses inside a full name →