Muia

surname · Latin script

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 11 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020

/muia/(machine-generated) Swahili · model-generated

Say it inExplore pronunciation →

Muia is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Kenya than in any other country.

  • KEKenya≈1 in 1.9K(inferred from the name graph)
  • ARArgentina1 in 247K
  • CACanada≈1 in 470Kfew records

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.

Kenya (inferred from the name graph)

≈29,000 people, est.

Record sources
136 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.9K (inferred from the name graph)

Kenya, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

How to pronounce Muia

  • Swahili:/muia/(machine-generated) model-generated

Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.

Meaning & origin

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

Where the surname Muia is found

(measured from records)

Muia 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 Muia is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
KE Kenya#201≈29,000 est.≈1 in 1.9K1Muia56
IT Italy—≈440 est.≈1 in 134KlistedMuia13
US United States—2131 in 1.6M292Muia136
AR Argentina—1841 in 247K184—1
CA Canada—≈89 est.≈1 in 465K—Muia31
IE Ireland—≈10 est.≈1 in 548K—Muia1

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: Mzalendo Trust "Elections Watch" — 2022 gazetted election winners; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); the xinhua-italian-manual register. 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 names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Muia is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Muià, Múía, Muiã, Muìa, Muiá

  • Spanish surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Spain, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Muià, Muiá, Muiã

  • French surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Canada, United States, Kenya

    Also written Muià, Muiã

  • Italian surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, United States, Canada

    Also written Muià, Muia', Muiá, Muiã

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Muiã, Muià

  • Arabic surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United States

    Also written Muià, Muiã

  • Korean surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Italy

    Also written Muià

27 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses

(measured from records)

Muia 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 Romanian, to wet, moisten, douse, soak

    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.

Notable people with this name

(measured from records)
  • Marcel MuiaRORomanian politician from Chevereșu Mare, Timiș County

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)
FormalDear Muia,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

16 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 11 countries.

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

Frequently asked questions

How do you pronounce Muia?
In Swahili /muia/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Muia?
Mondonomo estimates about 29 thousand people named Muia in Kenya, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled muia. After it come Italy, United States, Argentina and Canada; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Muia?
In the United States, the national register counted 213 people named Muia in 2010, about 1 in 1.6 million residents.
How common is Muia compared with other names?
In Kenya, Muia is the 201st most common surname of 179,147 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Muia?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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

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, “Muia” — ranked 907th in Kenya (Mzalendo Trust "Elections Watch"). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Muia parses inside a full name →