Mă

loc · Latin script

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

Mă is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Hakka 馬／马 (mǎ).

rarermore common
  • DZAlgeria≈1 in 19K(inferred from the name graph)
  • TNTunisia≈1 in 21K
  • EGEgypt≈1 in 150K

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.

United States (measured from records)

28,452 people, 2010

Sources
104 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 10K (inferred from the name graph)

Finland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

7 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Ma in DZ Algeria, TN Tunisia and Mặ in EG Egypt.

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)

From Hakka 馬／马 (mǎ).

Sources 9

Attested across 30 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Mă 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 Mă is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—28,4521 in 12K38K—104
DZ Algeria#150≈2,300 est.≈1 in 19K—Ma17
ES Spain—1,5921 in 31K1.6K—15
EG Egypt#811≈700 est.≈1 in 150K—Mặ55
TN Tunisia#414≈560 est.≈1 in 21K—Ma19
FI Finland—5501 in 10K550—1
SE Sweden—5421 in 19K542—7
NO Norway—3441 in 16K740—3

28,452 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)

Mă is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name81 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Mexico, Spain, France, Canada

    Languages: Spanish, French

    Also written Ma, M-A, Mà, M'A, Mã

  • Vietnamese surname19 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Vietnam, Algeria, United States, Czechia

    Languages: Vietnamese, Czech, Slovak

    Also written Mã, Mà, Má, Ma, Mạ

  • a separate surname39 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, India, Mexico

    Also written Ma, Mà, Mã, Mä, Må

  • Romanian name15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Romania

    Also written Ma, M-A, Ṃä, M'A, Må

  • Chinese surname13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tunisia

    Also written Ma, Mà, M-A, Má, Mä

  • Bulgarian surname39 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia

    Languages: Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian

    Also written Ma, Ма, Má, Mã, Må

  • Hungarian name10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Hungary

    Also written Ma, Má, Mà, Mâ, Mä

8 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)

Mă 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.

  • In sit-pro, advise

    as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)

  • In Romanian, me (accusative)

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

  • In nmy, soldier

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

  • In Romanian, MĂI interj. (Fam.) 1. Cuvânt de adresare către una sau mai multe persoane de sex masculin, mai rar feminin, care marchează între vorbitori un raport de la egal la egal sau de la superior la inferior; bă. 2. Cuvânt folosit pentru a exprima admirație; mirare, nedumerire; neîncredere; nemulțumire; ironie. [Var.: mă interj.]. ¶ MĂ interj. v. măi.

    as a wordDEX online (dexonline.ro) - DEX '96 / DEX '98 definitions with etymology

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

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Mă under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Mă mean, and where does it come from?
From Hakka 馬／马 (mǎ). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Russian Names and 7 other sources.
In which country does Mă have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 28 thousand people named Mă, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Mă most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Mă is densest in Finland — about 1 in 10 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Mă?
In the United States, the national register counted 28,452 people named Mă in 2010, about 1 in 12 thousand residents.
How common is Mă compared with other names?
In Algeria, Mă is the 150th most common surname of 89,473 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Mă?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/m%C4%83

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, “Mă” — the 150th most common surname in Algeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Mă parses inside a full name →