Merina
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A member of the a highlander Malagasy ethnic group in Madagascar whose core territory corresponds to the former Antananarivo Province in the centre of the island
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mɝinə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Merina is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 4.6Kas Marina(measured from records)
- TZTanzania≈1 in 5.2K
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 29K
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 Merina 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.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 170 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.2K (inferred from the name graph)
222,695 named Marina, 2022
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Tanzania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Marina in ES Spain.
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 member of the a highlander Malagasy ethnic group in Madagascar whose core territory corresponds to the former Antananarivo Province in the centre of the island.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
How Merina is read(measured from records)
Merina is one spelling over 5 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.
- Hindi32%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Merina in Hindi.
- Bangla21%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Merina in Bangla.
- English18%
A member of the a highlander Malagasy ethnic group in Madagascar whose core territory corresponds to the former Antananarivo Province in the centre of the island.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish7.0%
feminine singular of merino
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Indonesian5.2%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Merina in Indonesian.
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)
Merina 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | — | 222,695as Marina | 1 in 951 | 223K | Merina | 22 |
| ES Spain | — | 99,167as Marina | 1 in 504 | 99K | Marina | 39 |
| US United States | — | 72,807as Marina | 1 in 4.6K | 73K | Merina | 170 |
| HR Croatia | — | 23,604as Marina | 1 in 179 | 24K | Merina | 5 |
| MD Moldova | — | 21,989as Marina | 1 in 153 | 22K | — | 3 |
| SE Sweden | — | 11,253as Marina | 1 in 907 | 11K | — | 5 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | — | Merina | 13 |
| LV Latvia | — | 8,884as Marina | 1 in 212 | 8.9K | — | — |
| BD Bangladesh | #796 | ≈5,600 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Merina | 38 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 41 | 1 in 421K | 7.2K | Merina | 9 |
222,695 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022, counting the spelling marina. 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 — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); e-services.md — living population register; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017). 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)
Merina is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Malagasy, Malagasy: 'people of the highlands'
as a nameAfrican Names
In Icelandic, definite accusative singular of meri
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.
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 42 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 592 | #17,908 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 113 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 112 | #37,868 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 66 | #43,352 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 65 | #11,428 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 41 | #9,527 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 34 | — |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 28 | #16,279 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 1950 | 20 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 16 | #17,908 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2024 | 6 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2011 | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Merina mean, and where does it come from?
- A member of the a highlander Malagasy ethnic group in Madagascar whose core territory corresponds to the former Antananarivo Province in the centre of the island. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Merina?
- A machine transcription gives /mɝinə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Merina a male or female name?
- Merina is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Merina have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 223 thousand people named Marina, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Merina?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 41 people named Merina, about 1 in 421 thousand residents.
- How common is Merina compared with other names?
- In Bangladesh, Merina is the 796th most common given name of 29,323 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Merina?
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/merinaThe 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, “Merina” — the 796th most common given name in Bangladesh. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.