Inama

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Wild animals

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

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

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

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 2.3M(measured from records)
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 100K
  • ITItaly≈1 in 226K

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)

≈570 people, est.

Sources
80 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 100K (inferred from the name graph)

South Africa, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Wild animals.

Sources 1

  • The African book of names

Where in the world(measured from records)

Inama 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 Inama is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ZA South Africa≈570 est.≈1 in 100K—Inama9
IT Italy≈280 est.≈1 in 226K—Inama12
NG Nigeria≈200 est.≈1 in 1.1MlistedInama8
US United States1421 in 2.3M142Inama80
AR Argentina831 in 548K83—1
AT Austria≈36 est.≈1 in 244K—Inama19
BE Belgium291 in 404K29Inama5
IE Ireland≈13 est.≈1 in 400K—Inama1

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; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Inama is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Brazil, Guatemala

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Inamá, Îñàmâ

  • French surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Belgium, France, United States, South Africa

    Also written Înẵmẵ

32 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)

Inama is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Swahili, to bend down, to sag, to lean

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

  • In Southern Sotho, to bow, to stoop, to bend

    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)

  • Vigilio Inamab. 1835ITItalian cultural historian and archaeologist (1835-1912)

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 Ms Inama,
InformalHi Inama,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 13 sources across 8 countries.

Official registers attesting Inama
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010142#121,590
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000142#114,166
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020141#127,013
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—83—
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)200829#37,602
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary

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 Inama mean, and where does it come from?
Wild animals. Recorded by The African book of names.
How do you pronounce Inama?
A machine transcription gives /inəmə/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Inama have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 567 people named Inama in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled inama.
How common is the name Inama?
In the United States, the national register counted 142 people named Inama in 2010, about 1 in 2.3 million residents.

What do you want to know about Inama?

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

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

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, “Inama”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Inama parses inside a full name →