Mola
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A sunfish, Mola mola
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Mola is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country.
- ARArgentina1 in 4.3Kas Melo(measured from records)
- INIndia1 in 6.1Kas Mal
- NGNigeria≈1 in 20Kas Mala
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 Mola 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)
- #849 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 309 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 22K (inferred from the name graph)
1,522,803 named Melo
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Dominican Republic, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Mala in BR Brazil, NP Nepal, NG Nigeria and Mali 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)
habitational name from any of various places named Mola in Catalonia and Aragon, in particular the one in Teruel province (Aragon), from Latin mola ‘mill’, ‘millstone’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Mola is read(measured from records)
Mola 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.
- Spanish23%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Mola in Spanish.
- English22%
A sunfish, Mola mola.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Turkish7.7%
rest, break, pause
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Swahili7.0%
alternative letter-case form of Mola
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French5.9%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Mola in French.
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)
Mola 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 | — | 1,522,803as Melo | 1 in 139 | 1.5M | Mala | 31 |
| IN India | #141 | 218,731as Mal | 1 in 6.1K | 219K | Mali | 202 |
| NP Nepal | — | 19,605as Mali | 1 in 1.5K | 20K | Mala | 16 |
| AR Argentina | — | 10,683as Melo | 1 in 4.3K | 11K | Mola | 39 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 20K | listed | Mala | 30 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 6,842as Melo | 1 in 495 | 6.8K | Mola | 11 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 6,765as Malá | 1 in 1.6K | 6.8K | — | 2 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 4,471as Melo | 1 in 3.8K | 4.5K | — | 12 |
| DO Dominican Republic | #636 | ≈490 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Mola | 13 |
1,522,803 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname), counting the spelling melo. 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); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; NPHC 2021 — Population by caste/ethnicity group (national), surname-shaped categories only; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); MVČR — living population register 2017; INEC — civil registry names. 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)
Mola 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 Italian, habitational name from any of various places named Mola in Catalonia and Aragon, in particular the one in Teruel province (Aragon), from Latin mola ‘mill’, ‘millstone’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Italian, habitational name from any of numerous minor places named with Latin mola ‘mill’, ‘millstone’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Italian, do lat. mola; refere-se ao artesão ligado a mós ou ao hab. de cidade chamada Mola
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
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)
- Gaspare Molab. 1571ITItalian artist (1571-1640)
- Pier Francesco Molab. 1612CHSwiss painter (1612-1666)
- Emilio Molab. 1887ESSpanish military commander (1887-1937)
- Norberto Molab. 1902ITItalian conductor (1902–1973)
- Tina De Molab. 1923ITItalian actress (1923-2012)
- Aldo Alessandro Molab. 1943ITItalian writer
- María Teresa Mola Sainzb. 1953ESSpanish politician
- Ugo Molab. 1973FRFrench rugby union player and coach
- Ezgi Molab. 1983TRTurkish actor (born 1983)
- Mario Molab. 1990ESSpanish triathlete
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 36 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 554 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 513 | #16,725 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 304 | #13,277 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 145 | #17,656 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 52 | — |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 4 | #125,219 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 4 | #21,784 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 1 | — |
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)
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- 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 Mola come from?
- habitational name from any of various places named Mola in Catalonia and Aragon, in particular the one in Teruel province (Aragon), from Latin mola ‘mill’, ‘millstone’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What does the name Mola mean?
- In English, A sunfish, Mola mola.
- In which country does Mola have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 1.5 million people named Melo, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Mola?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 1,522,803 people named Melo, about 1 in 139 residents.
- How common is Mola compared with other names?
- In India, Mola is the 141st most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mola?
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/molaThe 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, “Mola” — the 141st most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.