Alaja
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Alaja is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- FIFinland1 in 59K(measured from records)
- NGNigeria≈1 in 226K
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 768K
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 58 (measured from records)
- 1 in 59K (inferred from the name graph)
≈950 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Alaja 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.
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: DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); the in-instate-surnames-bystate register; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)
Alaja is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Latvian, upe Krievijā (Alaj), Saratovas apgabala ziemeļu daļā, Tereškas labā krasta pieteka
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)
- Osmo Alajab. 1915FIFinnish priest
- Aune Alajab. 1915FIFinnish writer
- Pertti Alajab. 1952FIFinnish association football player and coach (1952–2017)
- Erkki Alajab. 1952FIFinnish association football player
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 14 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 94 | #13,326 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Sukunimitilasto (Finnish surnames register) | — | 41 | — |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 18 | #12,021 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 13 | #105,312 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 1 | #86,821 |
Reference works 2
- 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
- In which country does Alaja have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 949 people named Alaja in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled alaja.
- Where is Alaja most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Alaja is densest in Finland — about 1 in 59 thousand people — even though Nigeria holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Alaja?
- In Finland, the national register counted 94 people named Alaja, about 1 in 59 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Alaja?
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/alajaThe 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, “Alaja”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.