Gosa

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Origin unidentified

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

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

Gosa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 296K(measured from records)
  • ALAlbania≈1 in 22K
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 46K

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.

South Africa (inferred from the name graph)

≈1,200 people, est.

Sources
192 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 22K (inferred from the name graph)

Albania, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Origin unidentified.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Where in the world(measured from records)

Gosa 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 Gosa is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ZA South Africa≈1,200 est.≈1 in 46K—Gosa14
US United States1,1231 in 296K1.1KGosa192
RO Romania≈360 est.≈1 in 59K—Gosa6
IT Italy≈230 est.≈1 in 266K—Gosa6
PL Poland2121 in 181K108—1
MY Malaysia≈170 est.≈1 in 197K—Gosa2
AL Albania≈140 est.≈1 in 22K—Gosa11

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; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)

Gosa is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Gosá, Goša, Goşa, Goșa

  • Polish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States

    Also written Goşa, Gośa

  • Swahili surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, South Africa, Nigeria, India

    Languages: Swahili, Southern Sotho

    Also written Goşa

  • French surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, South Africa

    Also written Gosà, Goşa

  • Amharic surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ethiopia, United States, South Africa

    Also written ጎሳ, ጎሰ, ጎሣ, Gosaa, Goşa

  • Romanian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Romania, United States, United Kingdom, Italy

    Also written Goșa, Goša

39 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)

Gosa 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 Icelandic, indefinite genitive plural of gos

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

  • In bbc, torment, worry, harass

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

  • In se, (to) where, whither

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

  • In Swedish, to snuggle, cuddle

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

  • In Oromo, type, kind

    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)

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)

FormalDear Gosa,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 21 sources across 10 countries.

Official registers attesting Gosa
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.1K#22,886
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.1K#22,809
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.1K#22,143
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026108—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—108#28,096
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026104—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—104#28,571
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

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 Gosa mean, and where does it come from?
Origin unidentified. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Gosa?
A machine transcription gives /ˈɡoʊsə/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Gosa have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 1.2 thousand people named Gosa in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gosa.
How common is the name Gosa?
In the United States, the national register counted 1,123 people named Gosa in 2010, about 1 in 296 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Gosa?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Gosa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Gosa parses inside a full name →