Massai
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Portuguese: one of the Maasai (a people of Kenya and Tanzania)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/massai/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Massai is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country.
- ITItaly≈1 in 74K(inferred from the name graph)
- CMCameroon≈1 in 80K
- BRBrazil1 in 429K
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.
- Italy (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 29 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 74K (inferred from the name graph)
≈850 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Italy, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
one of the Maasai (a people of Kenya and Tanzania)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
How Massai is read(measured from records)
Massai is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- Italian21%
do lat. med. massarius, administrador; v. Massaro
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
- Spanish20%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Massai in Spanish.
- Portuguese18%
one of the Maasai (a people of Kenya and Tanzania)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French15%
first-person singular past historic of masser
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English12%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Massai in English.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Massai 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.
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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); the xinhua-italian-manual register; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Massai is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Norwegian Bokmål, form removed by a 2016 spelling decision; superseded by masai
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, Maasai (member of East African people)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, misspelling of maasai
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)
- Alexandre Massaib. 1600ITNeapolitan architect and military engineer
- Ferdinando Massaib. 1861ITItalian librarian (1861-1947)
- Elvezio Massaib. 1920ITItalian writer (1920–2009)
- Francesco Lorenzo Massai Landib. 1925ITsentenced to death during the World War II
- Veronica Massaib. 1980ITItalian historian (born 1980)
- Elena Massaib. 1993ITItalian biomedical engineer (born 1993)
- Diana MassaiITresearcher ORCID ID = 0000-0001-6339-7189
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 19 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 494 | #17,292 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 12 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 9 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 7 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 7 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 6 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 6 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 5 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 4 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 2 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 2 | — |
| IT Italy | 意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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
- What does the name Massai mean, and where does it come from?
- one of the Maasai (a people of Kenya and Tanzania) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Massai?
- In the etymology graph, Maasai is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Massai?
- A machine transcription gives /massai/ (IPA) for Italian.
- In which country does Massai have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 845 people named Massai in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled massai.
- How common is the name Massai?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 494 people named Massai, about 1 in 429 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Massai?
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/massaiThe 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, “Massai”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.