Musa
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Turkish: Moses (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))
Used for both men and women, depending on the country· national registers that list names by sex disagree
- United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed as male
- Kosovo (ASK Kosovo): listed as male
- Spain (INE): listed as male
- Brazil (IBGE): listed as female
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 61 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/muːsaː/(recorded in a dictionary) Turkish · from Wiktionary
Musa is a given name used for both men and women, depending on the country, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 300(inferred from the name graph)
- TZTanzania≈1 in 510few records
- TRTürkiye≈1 in 520
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 126 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 300 (inferred from the name graph)
≈780,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Nigeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
How to pronounce Musa
- Turkish:/muːsaː/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
- English:/ˈmuːsə/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
- Swahili:/musɑ/(machine-generated) model-generated
Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Wolof (Senegal), also Muslim/Swahili: 'mercy' or 'saved from the water'
Cited for this meaning 1
- African Names
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Musa is read
(measured from records)Musa is one spelling over 3 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.
- Turkish60%
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English15%
A male given name from Arabic, equivalent to English Moses.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Swahili8.2%
Moses (biblical character)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Musa, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Musa 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #574 | ≈780,000 est. | ≈1 in 300 | — | Musa | 49 |
| TR Türkiye | — | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 520 | — | Musa | 31 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 509 | — | Musa | 17 |
| IN India | — | ≈42,000 est. | ≈1 in 35K | 103 | Musa | 24 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Musa | 16 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | — | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 847 | 638 | — | 6 |
| US United States | — | 4,955 | 1 in 67K | 5.2K | Musa | 77 |
| XK Kosovo | — | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 595 | 2.8K | — | 2 |
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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search); Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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)Musa 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 Wolof, Wolof (Senegal), also Muslim/Swahili: 'mercy' or 'saved from the water'
as a nameAfrican Names
habitational name from a place called Musa, particularly the one in Melito di Porto Salvo in Reggio Calabria, and the one in Nissoria in Enna province, Sicily.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from the Arabic personal name Musa (the Biblical Moses). The Qur’an says (19:51): ‘He was specially chosen, and he was a Messenger and a Prophet.’
as a nameDictionary of American Family 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)- Al-Hadib. 761IQnot in their usual nameArab Abbasid Caliph (r. 785-786)
- Mansa Musab. 128014th-century emperor (mansa) of the Mali Empire
- Musa Barrowb. 1998GMGambian association football player
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)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)118 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 61 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Musa come from?
- Wolof (Senegal), also Muslim/Swahili: 'mercy' or 'saved from the water' Recorded by African Names.
- What does the name Musa mean?
- In Turkish, Moses
- How do you pronounce Musa?
- It depends on the language: in Turkish /muːsaː/ (Wiktionary); in English /ˈmuːsə/ (Wiktionary); in Swahili /musɑ/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Is Musa a male or female name?
- Musa is used for both men and women, depending on the country. National registers that list names by sex disagree: United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed as male; Kosovo (ASK Kosovo): listed as male; Spain (INE): listed as male; Brazil (IBGE): listed as female. We don't publish a percentage split.
- What are other forms of the name Musa?
- In the etymology graph, Moses, Moshe and Moisés are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Which countries have the most people named Musa?
- Mondonomo estimates about 777 thousand people named Musa in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled musa. After it come Türkiye, Tanzania, India and South Africa; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Musa?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,955 people named Musa in 2020, about 1 in 67 thousand residents.
- How common is Musa compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Musa is the 574th most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Musa?
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/musaThe 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, “Musa” — the 574th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.