Alaia
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Alaia is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Ecuador than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Borrowed in the 21st century from Basque Alaia, from alai (“joyful”). For earlier use among English-speakers, compare Hebrew עֲלִיָּה ('alīyá, “ascent”), Arabic عَالِيَة (ʕāliya, “high, exalted”).
- ARArgentina≈1 in 98K(inferred from the name graph)
- ECEcuador1 in 3.1K
- ESSpain1 in 15K
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.
- Ecuador (measured from records)
- Sources
- 106 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.1K (inferred from the name graph)
5,518 people, 2024
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- BasqueAlaia(measured from records)
- Basque rootalai“joyful”(measured from records)
Borrowed in the 21st century from Basque Alaia, from alai (“joyful”). For earlier use among English-speakers, compare Hebrew עֲלִיָּה ('alīyá, “ascent”), Arabic عَالِيَة (ʕāliya, “high, exalted”).
Sources 2
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Alaia 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC Ecuador | 5,518 | 1 in 3.1K | 5.5K | Alaia | 6 |
| ES Spain | 3,357 | 1 in 15K | 3.4K | Alaia | 49 |
| US United States | 3,199 | 1 in 104K | 3.2K | Alaia | 106 |
| AR Argentina | ≈460 est. | ≈1 in 98K | 1.6K | Alaia | 22 |
| PY Paraguay | ≈420 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Alaia | 4 |
| PA Panama | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Alaia | 5 |
| UY Uruguay | 139 | 1 in 24K | 139 | — | 7 |
5,518 people counted by INEC — civil registry names, 2024. 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: INEC — civil registry names; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; RENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present); INE Uruguay — Nombres más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Alaia Martin Etxebesteb. 1987ESbertsolari
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 49 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 125 | #138,300 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 106 | #153,769 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Alaia mean, and where does it come from?
- Borrowed in the 21st century from Basque Alaia, from alai (“joyful”). For earlier use among English-speakers, compare Hebrew עֲלִיָּה ('alīyá, “ascent”), Arabic عَالِيَة (ʕāliya, “high, exalted”). Recorded by Wiktionary and Nordic Names.
- How common is the name Alaia?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted 5,518 people named Alaia in 2024, about 1 in 3.1 thousand residents.
- Is Alaia a male or female name?
- Alaia 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 Alaia have the most bearers?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted about 5.5 thousand people named Alaia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled alaia.
- Where is Alaia most common?
- Alaia is densest in Ecuador, where the national register counts about 1 in 3.1 thousand people carrying it.
What do you want to know about Alaia?
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/alaiaThe 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, “Alaia”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.