Buaya
loc · Latin script
Meaning: A crocodile (reptile)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Buaya is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country.
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 164K(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 621K
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 33K
carrying the name, as Mondonomo estimates it from our sources: no national register counts it in these countries. Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Buaya 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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 42 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 33K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,300 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Philippines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Bua-Ya in PH Philippines and บัวยะ in TH Thailand.
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)
A crocodile (reptile).
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Buaya 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 33K | — | Bua-Ya | 29 |
| ID Indonesia | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 164K | — | Buaya | 42 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈53 est. | ≈1 in 621K | — | Buaya | 9 |
| TH Thailand | ≈30 est. | ≈1 in 2.3M | #319,360 | บัวยะ | 18 |
| US United States | ≈20 est. | ≈1 in 17M | listed | — | 35 |
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: the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register. 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)
Buaya is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Indonesian, crocodile (reptile)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In zlm, crocodile. Properly Crocodilus porosus, the estuary crocodile. A very large house-lizard is called sometimes (house crocodile); and the description 'land crocodile' is given to 'samsengs' or roughs, and in the eastern islands of the archipelago to the dragon-like monitor, Varanus komodoensis. Proverbially the crocodile is a symbol of pitiless greed
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Filipino, obsolete form of buwaya (“crocodile”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In bew, crocodile
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In rob, crocodile; used as an exclamation and a curse: my God!, horrible!
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 1 sources across 1 country.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Buaya mean, and where does it come from?
- A crocodile (reptile). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Buaya have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.3 thousand people named Buaya in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled Bua-Ya.
- How common is the name Buaya?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3,300 people in the Philippines have Buaya as their first surname, about 1 in 33 thousand residents. No national register counts it there; the figure is ours, calibrated against the registers that do.
What do you want to know about Buaya?
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/buayaThe 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, “Buaya”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.