Latah
loc · Latin script
Meaning: A condition found in Malaysia and nearby areas characterised by extreme suggestibility; also, a person suffering from this malady (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))
Latah is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Greece it is the 19th most common given name. Latah is also written ลิตา in Thai, לידא in Hebrew and 리다 in Korean (Hangul).
- SESweden1 in 193as Linda(measured from records)
- LVLatvia1 in 239as Linda
- USUnited States1 in 286as Linda
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Latah itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 9 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 188 (measured from records)
- 1 in 193 (inferred from the name graph)
1,164,876 named Linda, 2020
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Sweden, as Linda
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Latah in other scripts: Latin, Thai, Hebrew and 6 more
(measured from records)Locally spelled Linda in SE Sweden, GR Greece, Latha in US United States, Lata in IN India and Lida in CO Colombia.
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)A condition found in Malaysia and nearby areas characterised by extreme suggestibility; also, a person suffering from this malady.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world
(measured from records)Latah 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 1,164,876as Linda | 1 in 286 | 1.2M | Latha | 188 |
| IN India | #247 | ≈1,000,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | 3.9K | Lata | 166 |
| SE Sweden | — | 52,786as Linda | 1 in 193 | 53K | Linda | 18 |
| CO Colombia | #393 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | 25 | Lida | 108 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 16,322as Linda | 1 in 656 | 16K | — | — |
| NO Norway | — | 14,943as Linda | 1 in 366 | 48K | — | 6 |
| DK Denmark | — | 9,622as Linda | 1 in 610 | 9.6K | — | — |
| LV Latvia | — | 7,884as Linda | 1 in 239 | 7.9K | Lāta | 6 |
| GR Greece | #19 | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | — | Linda | 70 |
1,164,876 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling linda. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); the co-datosgov-candidates register; MVČR — living population register 2017; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register); PMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup). 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)Latah 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 English, county, ID
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In zlm, paroxysmal neurosis; a peculiar local disease with paroxysms provoked by some unexpected event, startling, but often quite trivial; these paroxysms are often mimetic and seem due to suggestion; the disease seems of sexual origin, is found only among adults, and is accompanied usually by obscene conduct or language while the paroxysms last
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Javanese, a mental disorder found in certain lower-class women past middle age, characterized by involuntary compulsive utterance of obscenities, parodying of others’ actions, or other socially or morally offensive behavior
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Malay, latah (A condition found in Malaysia and nearby areas characterised by extreme suggestibility)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In kaw, bewildered, perplexed, dumbfounded
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Latah mean, and where does it come from?
- A condition found in Malaysia and nearby areas characterised by extreme suggestibility; also, a person suffering from this malady. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Which countries have the most people named Latah?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.2 million people named Linda, more than in any other country we hold. After it come India, Sweden, Colombia and Czechia; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Latah most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Latah itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Sweden's: the national register counts about 1 in 193 people named Linda.
- How common is the name Latah?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,164,876 people named Linda in 2020, about 1 in 286 residents.
- How common is Latah compared with other names?
- In Greece, Latah is the 19th most common given name of 24,546 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Latah?
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/latahThe 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, “Latah” — ranked 20th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2020). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.