Essa

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Diminutif ou forme régionale de Jessé/Esther selon l’usage

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ˈɛsə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Essa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Egypt than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • KWKuwait≈1 in 3.4K(inferred from the name graph)
  • SYSyria≈1 in 3.4K
  • AEUnited Arab Emirates≈1 in 3.8K

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.

Egypt (inferred from the name graph)

≈20,000 people, est.

Sources
167 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 3.4K (inferred from the name graph)

Kuwait, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

recorded in French

Diminutif ou forme régionale de Jessé/Esther selon l’usage.

Sources 1

  • Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Essa 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.

Where Essa is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
EG Egypt#266≈20,000 est.≈1 in 5.2K—Essa94
SA Saudi Arabia#361≈7,300 est.≈1 in 4.7K—Essa107
PK Pakistan—≈6,400 est.≈1 in 37K—Essa39
SY Syria#133≈5,600 est.≈1 in 3.4K—Essa20
ZA South Africa—≈2,700 est.≈1 in 21K—Essa44
AE United Arab Emirates#136≈2,700 est.≈1 in 3.8K—Essa104
KW Kuwait#165≈890 est.≈1 in 3.4K—Essa75
US United States—8021 in 415K1.1KEssa167

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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Essa is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, South Africa, Germany, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, German

    Also written Éssa, Èssã, Ěssą, Eśşa, Êssà

  • French surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, United States, Syria

    Also written Éssa, Es-Sa, Es-Sã

  • Swedish surname11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, United States

    Languages: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian

    Also written Èššaa, Èššå, Êssã, Ęsså, Èśša

  • Polish surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United Kingdom

    Also written Ēssa

55 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Essa 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 Arabic, Jesus + title

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

  • In Catalan, The name of the Latin-script letter S/s.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Norwegian Nynorsk, definite neuter plural of ess

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Corsican, Ultramontane form of esse

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Portuguese, feminine singular of esse

    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)

1940196019802000Eva Essa, b. 1940Irfan Essa, b. 1965Maario Essa, b. 1987

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)

Formalالسيد Essa المحترم،Dear Mr. Essa, (English)
Informalمرحباً Essa،Hi Essa, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 58 sources across 29 countries.

Official registers attesting Essa
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.1K#24,345
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010802#29,447
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000492#41,657

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • 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

What are other forms of the name Essa?
In the etymology graph, Issa, Iosue and Iokua are forms of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Essa?
A machine transcription gives /ˈɛsə/ (IPA) for Arabic.
What does the name Essa mean?
Recorded meaning: Diminutif ou forme régionale de Jessé/Esther selon l’usage.
In which country does Essa have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 20 thousand people named Essa in Egypt, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled essa.
How common is the name Essa?
In the United States, the national register counted 802 people named Essa in 2010, about 1 in 415 thousand residents.
How common is Essa compared with other names?
In Egypt, Essa is the 266th most common surname of 306,210 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Essa?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/essa

The 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, “Essa” — the 266th most common surname in Egypt. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Essa parses inside a full name →