Lema
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: motto
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/lema/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lema is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country. In Ecuador it is the 29th most common surname.
- ECEcuador1 in 369(measured from records)
- UYUruguay1 in 914
- ARArgentina1 in 3Kas Lima
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 Lema 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.
- Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 195 (measured from records)
- 1 in 369 (inferred from the name graph)
≈49,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Lama in IN India.
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)
The secretion of the tarsal glands of the eye.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Lema is read(measured from records)
Lema is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Spanish62%
motto
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English12%
The secretion of the tarsal glands of the eye.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lema 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TZ Tanzania | #649 | ≈49,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 1 | Lema | 20 |
| EC Ecuador | #29 | 45,808 | 1 in 369 | 46K | Lema | 56 |
| IN India | — | 29,966as Lama | 1 in 44K | 30K | Lama | 33 |
| US United States | — | 19,109as Lima | 1 in 17K | 21K | Lema | 195 |
| AR Argentina | #830 | 15,169as Lima | 1 in 3K | 15K | Lema | 91 |
| UY Uruguay | #137 | 3,706 | 1 in 914 | 3.7K | Lema | 50 |
| NO Norway | — | 1,280as Lima | 1 in 4.3K | 1.3K | — | 2 |
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: INEC — civil registry names; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results. 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)
Lema is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
habitational name from Lema in A Coruna province.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
cultivated, developed.
as a nameAfrican Names
In ifb, the number ‘five’
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Latin, rheum that collects in the corner of the eyes
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)
- Manuela Oreiro Lema de Vegab. 1818ESSpanish opera singer
- Mario Menab. 1923BOnot in their usual nameBolivian footballer (1923–2013)
- Tony Lemab. 1934USprofessional golfer (1934-1966)
- Vicente Zito Lemab. 1939ARArgentinian lawyer (1939–2022)
- Nino Lemab. 1964ESSpanish football player/manager
- Alberto Lemab. 1975ESGalician writer
- Martín Lemab. 1982UYUruguayan politician
- Aimée Zito Lemab. 1982NLArtist
- Cristian Lemab. 1990ARArgentine footballer
- Chris Lemab. 1996USAmerican soccer player
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 62 sources across 35 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 46K | #74 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 4.1K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.1K | #7,756 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.9K | #8,439 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 3.7K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.6K | #11,123 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 405 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 24 | #38,865 |
| TZ Tanzania | INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results | 2020 | 1 | #12 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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
- Where does the name Lema come from?
- The secretion of the tarsal glands of the eye. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Lema have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 49 thousand people named Lema in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lema.
- Where is Lema most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lema is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 369 people — even though Tanzania holds more of our records for it.
- How do you pronounce Lema?
- A machine transcription gives /lema/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Lema mean?
- In Spanish, motto
- How common is the name Lema?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted 45,808 people named Lema in 2024, about 1 in 369 residents.
- How common is Lema compared with other names?
- In Tanzania, Lema is the 649th most common surname of 112,969 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lema?
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/lemaThe 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, “Lema” — the 649th most common surname in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.