Mtshali

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/mtsɑːʎi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Mtshali is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country, where it is the 62nd most common surname.

rarermore common
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 872(inferred from the name graph)
  • SZEswatini≈1 in 4.4K
  • SASaudi Arabia≈1 in 697K

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.

South Africa (inferred from the name graph)

≈65,000 people, est.

Sources
86 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 872 (inferred from the name graph)

South Africa, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin

No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Mtshali 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.

Where Mtshali is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ZA South Africa#62≈65,000 est.≈1 in 872listedMtshali86
SZ Eswatini—≈250 est.≈1 in 4.4K4—3
SA Saudi Arabia—≈49 est.≈1 in 697K—Mtshali5
US United States—≈36 est.≈1 in 9.3MlistedMtshali50
GB United Kingdom—≈20 est.≈1 in 3.3M—Mtshali21
NL Netherlands—≈6 est.≈1 in 3M—Mtshali3
NZ New Zealand—≈2 est.≈1 in 2M—Mtshali3
PL Poland—21 in 19M2——

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: the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; Eswatini EBC 2023 Secondary Elections candidate ballots; 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).

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Mtshali is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Zulu, Zulu clan name with praise "Magalela".

    as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames

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)

FormalDear Mtshali,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 5 sources across 4 countries.

Official registers attesting Mtshali
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SZ EswatiniEswatini EBC 2023 Secondary Elections candidate ballots20234#47
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20262—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—2#363,492
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.)———

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

How do you pronounce Mtshali?
A machine transcription gives /mtsɑːʎi/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Mtshali have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 65 thousand people named Mtshali in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mtshali.
How common is the name Mtshali?
In Poland, the national register counted 2 people named Mtshali in 2026, about 1 in 19 million residents.
How common is Mtshali compared with other names?
In South Africa, Mtshali is the 62nd most common surname of 285,788 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Mtshali?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mtshali

The 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, “Mtshali” — the 62nd most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Mtshali parses inside a full name →