Moyo
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Archaic form of moio
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 21 countries · latest register: ECN Government Gazette 8791, 2025
/mojo/(machine-generated) Swahili · model-generated
Moyo is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Zimbabwe than in any other country, where it is the 75th most common surname.
- ZWZimbabwe≈1 in 150(inferred from the name graph)
- MWMalawi≈1 in 520few records
- ZMZambia≈1 in 1.2K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Zimbabwe (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 183 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 146 (inferred from the name graph)
≈110,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Zimbabwe, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Archaic form of moio.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where the surname Moyo is found
(measured from records)Moyo 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZW Zimbabwe | #75 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 146 | 400K | Moyo | 73 |
| ZA South Africa | #99 | ≈44,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Moyo | 98 |
| MW Malawi | #16 | ≈42,000 est. | ≈1 in 518 | 1 | Moyo | 27 |
| ZM Zambia | #71 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 38K | Moyo | 40 |
| TZ Tanzania | #407 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.6K | — | Moyo | 27 |
| NA Namibia | — | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 3K | 1 | — | 8 |
| US United States | — | 442 | 1 in 753K | 630 | Moyo | 183 |
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: This page provides an overview of common surnames in Zimbabwe, published on surnam.es.; Zambia top-100 surnames (surnam.es); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; ECN Government Gazette 8791 — 2025 local authority candidates. 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)Moyo is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Heart
as a nameThe book of African names
Heart; ancient totem of Rozvi kings
as a nameThe book of African names
God health
as a nameThe book of African names
In German, aus Malawi stammender männl. Vom., der in der Ngoni-Sprache »Leben, Wohl befinden, Gesundheit« bedeutet.
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Life, well-being, good health. Malawi
as a nameThe African book of names
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)- Jonathan Moyob. 1957ZWZimbabwean politician
- Dambisa Moyob. 1969ZMZambian-born economist
- Masasa Moyob. 1970CACanadian television actress
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)35 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 21 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Moyo mean, and where does it come from?
- Archaic form of moio. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Moyo?
- In Swahili /mojo/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Moyo?
- Mondonomo estimates about 114 thousand people named Moyo in Zimbabwe, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled moyo. After it come South Africa, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Moyo?
- In the United States, the national register counted 442 people named Moyo in 2010, about 1 in 753 thousand residents.
- How common is Moyo compared with other names?
- In Zimbabwe, Moyo is the 75th most common surname of 9,561 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Moyo?
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/moyoThe 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, “Moyo” — the 75th most common surname in Zimbabwe. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.