Gawa
loc · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Gawa is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Compare Cebuano gama and Kapampangan gaua. Cognate with Javanese ꦒꦮꦺ (gawé, “to do; to work”).
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 889K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States≈1 in 11M
- INIndia1 in 24M
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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 31 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 889K (inferred from the name graph)
≈120 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Philippines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Gaw-A in PH Philippines.
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)
Compare Cebuano gama and Kapampangan gaua. Cognate with Javanese ꦒꦮꦺ (gawé, “to do; to work”).
Sources 1
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gawa 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 | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 889K | — | Gaw-A | 5 |
| IN India | 55 | 1 in 24M | 55 | — | 5 |
| US United States | ≈30 est. | ≈1 in 11M | listed | — | 31 |
| PG Papua New Guinea | — | — | 1 | — | — |
| MW Malawi | — | — | listed | — | 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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; PNG Election Results Database — candidate names (1972–2022); 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)
Gawa is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In men, v., to bend back, to strut, to draw back the hand
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In Swahili, to divide (split or separate into two or more parts)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Initialism of Green and White Army.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Japanese, Rōmaji transcription of がわ
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Filipino, act of doing something
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Hausa, corpse, carcass
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.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 6 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 55 | #42,019 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 8 | #776 |
| PG Papua New Guinea | PNG Election Results Database — candidate names (1972–2022) | — | 1 | #35 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
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 Gawa mean, and where does it come from?
- Compare Cebuano gama and Kapampangan gaua. Cognate with Javanese ꦒꦮꦺ (gawé, “to do; to work”). Recorded by Wiktionary.
- In which country does Gawa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 123 people named Gawa in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gaw-a.
- How common is the name Gawa?
- In India, the national register counted 55 people named Gawa, about 1 in 24 million residents.
What do you want to know about Gawa?
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/gawaThe 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, “Gawa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.