Chacha
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Swahili: to ferment, turn sour
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/tʃatʃa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Chacha is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country, where it is the 36th most common surname.
- TZTanzania≈1 in 698(inferred from the name graph)
- ECEcuador1 in 1.5K
- KEKenya≈1 in 1.8K
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.
- Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 134 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 698 (inferred from the name graph)
≈84,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Tanzania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
female equivalent of chacho (“kid”)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
How Chacha is read(measured from records)
Chacha is one spelling over 2 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.
- Swahili52%
to ferment, turn sour
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish26%
female equivalent of chacho (“kid”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Chacha 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TZ Tanzania | #36 | ≈84,000 est. | ≈1 in 698 | 3 | Chacha | 42 |
| KE Kenya | #171 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | listed | Chacha | 48 |
| EC Ecuador | #325 | 11,243 | 1 in 1.5K | 11K | Chacha | 31 |
| DZ Algeria | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 36K | listed | Chacha | 7 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈900 est. | ≈1 in 62K | — | Chacha | 15 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | — | 1 | 1 in 54K | 1 | — | — |
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 Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results; INEC — civil registry names; St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026. 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)
Chacha 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 English, A traditional Georgian clear strong liquor distilled from pomace.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
strong
as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names
In Russian, "stroke."
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
In Cebuano, a diminutive of the female given names Charlene or Charmaine
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)
- Mohamed Chachab. 1955NLDutch writer
- Marwa Chachab. 1978TZTanzanian politician
- Rosa Chachab. 1982ECEcuadorian distance runner
- Antônio Carlos Chachá PereiraBRBrazilian politician
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 35 sources across 21 countries.
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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
- Where does the name Chacha come from?
- female equivalent of chacho (“kid”) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Chacha?
- A machine transcription gives /tʃatʃa/ (IPA) for Swahili.
- What does the name Chacha mean?
- In Swahili, to ferment, turn sour
- In which country does Chacha have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 84 thousand people named Chacha in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chacha.
- How common is the name Chacha?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted 11,243 people named Chacha in 2024, about 1 in 1.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Chacha compared with other names?
- In Tanzania, Chacha is the 36th most common surname of 112,969 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Chacha?
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/chachaThe 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, “Chacha” — the 36th most common surname in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.