Boia
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Boia is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Portuguese, recorded as float (buoyant device used to support something in water).
- BRBrazil1 in 195K(measured from records)
- RORomania≈1 in 62K
- PTPortugal≈1 in 67K
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.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- Sources
- 53 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 62K (inferred from the name graph)
1,085 people
Highest-authority source
Romania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
float (buoyant device used to support something in water)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
How Boia is read(measured from records)
Boia is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Portuguese68%
float (buoyant device used to support something in water)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English11%
Initialism of Budapest Open Access Initiative.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French7.7%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Boia in French.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Boia 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.
1,085 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Boia 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 chb, arrowleaf elephant ear; Xanthosoma sagittifolium
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, fetter, collar for the neck
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, partitive plural of boa
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In pov, to float (in the water)
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)
- Aurel Boiab. 1913RORomanian Esperantist
- Lucian Boiab. 1944RORomanian historian
- Raquel BoiaPTresearcher, portuguese neuroscientist
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 10 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.1K | #8,615 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 34 | #58,400 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 34 | #57,670 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 4 | #70,384 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- 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 Boia mean, and where does it come from?
- float (buoyant device used to support something in water) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Boia have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 1.1 thousand people named Boia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled boia.
- How common is the name Boia?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 1,085 people named Boia, about 1 in 195 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Boia?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/boiaThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Boia”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.