Usha
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Usha is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country. In India it is the 21st most common given name. Recorded meaning: Sanskrit: ‘dawn’, personified as the daughter of heaven, the sister of the solar gods and of night, the wife of the god Rudra; said to be very beautiful, the friend of men, the bringer of wealth, and.
- TZTanzania≈1 in 211as Asha(inferred from the name graph)
- SESweden1 in 275as Åsa
- THThailand≈1 in 2.3Kas อุษา
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 Usha 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.
- Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)
- #386 (measured from records)
- 8 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 288 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈280,000 named Asha, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nepal, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Asha in IN India, BD Bangladesh, KE Kenya, อุษา in TH Thailand, Åsa in SE Sweden and Usa in TZ Tanzania.
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)
Sanskrit: ‘dawn’, personified as the daughter of heaven, the sister of the solar gods and of night, the wife of the god Rudra; said to be very beautiful, the friend of men, the bringer of wealth, and always young although she makes men grow old.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Usha 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TZ Tanzania | #351 | ≈280,000 est. | ≈1 in 211 | 8 | Usa | 22 |
| SE Sweden | #57 | 37,097as Åsa | 1 in 275 | 37K | Åsa | 89 |
| TH Thailand | #360 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | #660,801 | อุษา | 107 |
| BD Bangladesh | #354 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 7K | listed | Asha | 48 |
| KE Kenya | — | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | — | Asha | 13 |
| NP Nepal | — | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Usha | 48 |
| IS Iceland | — | 448as Ása | 1 in 783 | 471 | — | — |
| IN India | #21 | — | — | 723 | Asha | 229 |
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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry); Hagstofa Íslands — Given-name frequency by population (2005). 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)
Usha 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 German, weibl. Vom. indischer Herkunft (sans krit. usä »Morgendämmerung«). lisi: männl. Vom. biblischer Herkunft (hebr. ‘üzzi, Kurzform von Usiel, »Gott ist Kraft« oder Usija »Jahwe ist Kraft«). Im Alten
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
name of a god; sunrise time
as a nameA Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India
In English, Initialism of United States Housing Authority.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In ari, chicken hawk
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)
- K. K. Ushab. 1939INIndian judge
- Usha Prashar, Baroness Prasharb. 1948GBParliamentarian (born 1948)
- Usha Rao-Monarib. 1959INDirector, Sustainable Business Advisory - International Finance Corporation (IFC)
- Usha Tandonb. 1961INIndian academic and legal scholar
- Usha Thakurb. 1966INIndian politician
- Usha Vanceb. 1986USSecond Lady of the United States since 2025
- Usha RamanathanINIndian human rights activist
- Usha Ramakrishnanresearcher
- Usha MallikUSresearcher (ORCID 0000-0001-7934-1649)
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 40 sources across 23 countries.
Reference works 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Usha mean, and where does it come from?
- Sanskrit: ‘dawn’, personified as the daughter of heaven, the sister of the solar gods and of night, the wife of the god Rudra; said to be very beautiful, the friend of men, the bringer of wealth, and… Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Usha a male or female name?
- Usha 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.
- What are other forms of the name Usha?
- In the etymology graph, Ushas is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Usha have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 278 thousand people named Asha in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Usha?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 37,097 people named Åsa, about 1 in 275 residents.
- How common is Usha compared with other names?
- In Tanzania, Usha is the 351st most common given name of 37,285 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Usha?
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/ushaThe 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, “Usha” — the 351st most common given name in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.