Massawe
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Massawe is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country, where it is the 40th most common surname. Recorded meaning: Swahili name; meaning not clear in context.
- TZTanzania≈1 in 601(inferred from the name graph)
- KEKenya≈1 in 935K
- SESweden≈1 in 1.1M
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.
- Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 55 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 601 (inferred from the name graph)
≈97,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Tanzania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Swahili name; meaning not clear in context.
Sources 1
- African Muslim Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Massawe 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 | #40 | ≈97,000 est. | ≈1 in 601 | 1 | Massawe | 55 |
| KE Kenya | — | ≈57 est. | ≈1 in 935K | — | Massawe | 9 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈43 est. | ≈1 in 1.3M | — | Massawe | 6 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | — | ≈43 est. | ≈1 in 2.4M | — | Massawe | 1 |
| US United States | — | ≈37 est. | ≈1 in 8.9M | listed | Massawe | 49 |
| SE Sweden | — | ≈9 est. | ≈1 in 1.1M | — | Massawe | 4 |
| PL Poland | — | 2 | 1 in 19M | 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 Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results; the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Isaac Amani Massaweb. 1951TZTanzanian Roman Catholic archbishop
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 4 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #364,077 |
| TZ Tanzania | INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results | 2020 | 1 | #12 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Massawe mean, and where does it come from?
- Swahili name; meaning not clear in context. Recorded by African Muslim Names.
- In which country does Massawe have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 97 thousand people named Massawe in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled massawe.
- How common is the name Massawe?
- In Poland, the national register counted 2 people named Massawe in 2026, about 1 in 19 million residents.
- How common is Massawe compared with other names?
- In Tanzania, Massawe is the 40th most common surname of 112,969 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Massawe?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/massaweThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Massawe” — the 40th most common surname in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.