Ajayi
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A surname from Yoruba
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/adʒaji/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ajayi is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Nigeria it is the 9th most common surname.
- USUnited States1 in 207K(measured from records)
- NGNigeria≈1 in 11M
- VCSt. Vincent & Grenadines1 in 34K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 291 (measured from records)
- 1 in 34K (inferred from the name graph)
1,610 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
St. Vincent & Grenadines
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A surname from Yoruba.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ajayi 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 1,610 | 1 in 207K | 3K | Ajayi | 291 |
| ES Spain | — | 99 | 1 in 505K | 99 | Ajayi | 26 |
| FI Finland | — | 67 | 1 in 83K | 67 | — | 11 |
| SE Sweden | — | 61 | 1 in 167K | 61 | — | 12 |
| PL Poland | — | 33 | 1 in 1.2M | 23 | — | — |
| NG Nigeria | #9 | ≈20 est. | ≈1 in 11M | listed | Ajayi | 152 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 3 | 1 in 34K | 3 | — | — |
1,610 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025). 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)
Ajayi is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Born face downwards
as a nameThe book of African names
Bom face downwards
as a nameA Handbook of African Names
In Yoruba, a unisex given name meaning “One we fight to turn”, an orúkọ àmútọ̀runwá given to a child born sideways or facing downwards
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)
- Rotimi Isaac Ajayib. 1965NGA Nigerian teacher, researcher and author (born 1965)
- Samuel Ajayib. 1984NGNigerian footballer
- Luvvie Ajayib. 1985NGNigerian-American author
- Abisoye Ajayi-Akinfolarinb. 1985NGNigerian women's activist
- Semi Ajayib. 1993GBNigerian footballer (born 1993)
- Jay Ajayib. 1993GBAmerican football player
- Goodness Ohiremen Ajayib. 1994NGNigerian footballer
- Junior Ajayib. 1996NGNigerian association football player
- Yinka Ajayib. 1997NGNigerian athletics competitor
- Damola Ajayib. 2005GBEnglish footballer
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 34 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3K | #10,093 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.6K | #17,502 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 788 | #28,489 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 99 | #27,820 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 99 | #27,638 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 67 | #17,550 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 61 | #10,783 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 23 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 23 | #81,488 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 10 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 10 | #131,366 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 3 | #259 |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Ajayi mean, and where does it come from?
- A surname from Yoruba. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Ajayi?
- A machine transcription gives /adʒaji/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Ajayi have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.6 thousand people named Ajayi, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ajayi.
- Where is Ajayi most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ajayi is densest in St. Vincent & Grenadines — about 1 in 34 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Ajayi?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,610 people named Ajayi in 2010, about 1 in 207 thousand residents.
- How common is Ajayi compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Ajayi is the 9th most common surname of 346,007 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ajayi?
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/ajayiThe 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, “Ajayi” — the 9th most common surname in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.