Japa
surname · Latin script
Meaning: to emigrate from a country for better pay or working conditions
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/xapa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Japa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.
- DODominican Republic≈1 in 16K(inferred from the name graph)
- PEPeru≈1 in 29K
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 246K
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.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 75 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 15K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,700 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Zimbabwe, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
to emigrate from a country for better pay or working conditions.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Japa 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | — | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 357K | 4 | Japa | 12 |
| PE Peru | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Japa | 31 |
| ZW Zimbabwe | — | ≈990 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Japa | 4 |
| DO Dominican Republic | #553 | ≈650 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Japa | 18 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈440 est. | ≈1 in 246K | — | Japa | 14 |
| US United States | — | 158 | 1 in 2.1M | 216 | Japa | 75 |
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; naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls). 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)
Japa 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.
Ganega (N); Siirya (N); Siva (N)
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
Radha (N)
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
In pmf, sound of loud chewing or smacking of the lips
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Portuguese, a person from Japan or of Japanese descent
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In pcm, to relocate; to emigrate
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)
- Józef Japab. 1910PLPolish hematologist and internist
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 16 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 216 | #91,558 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 158 | #111,426 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 6 | #6,323 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Japa mean, and where does it come from?
- to emigrate from a country for better pay or working conditions. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Japa?
- A machine transcription gives /xapa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Japa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.7 thousand people named Japa in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled japa.
- How common is the name Japa?
- In the United States, the national register counted 158 people named Japa in 2010, about 1 in 2.1 million residents.
- How common is Japa compared with other names?
- In the Dominican Republic, Japa is the 553rd most common surname of 26,844 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Japa?
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/japaThe 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, “Japa” — the 553rd most common surname in Dominican Republic. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.