Mwaka
surname · Latin script
Meaning: year
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Mwaka is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Kenya than in any other country.
- KEKenya≈1 in 6.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- ZMZambia≈1 in 8.8K
- UGUganda≈1 in 11K
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.
- Kenya (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 42 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 6.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈8,100 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Kenya, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
year
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mwaka 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KE Kenya | #686 | ≈8,100 est. | ≈1 in 6.6K | listed | Mwaka | 29 |
| UG Uganda | #836 | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 11K | 2 | Mwaka | 24 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Mwaka | 19 |
| ZM Zambia | #584 | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.8K | 2 | Mwaka | 29 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 79K | 1 | Mwaka | 6 |
| NA Namibia | — | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 25K | 3 | — | 2 |
| BE Belgium | — | 5 | 1 in 2.3M | 5 | Mwaka | 7 |
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: ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections — candidate results; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; Talatala — Assemblée Nationale Députés Nationaux (current legislature, 2024-2028); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); 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)
Mwaka 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.
In Swahili, new year
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
Born at year’s opening.
as a nameThe African book of names
Born on New Year’s Eve.
as a nameThe African book of names
born in new year
as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names
In Ganda, base state of omwaka
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)
- Victoria MwakaUGUgandan geography professor, politician and women's-rights activist
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 14 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 5 | #99,703 |
| UG Uganda | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 2 | #82 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | Talatala — Assemblée Nationale Députés Nationaux (current legislature, 2024-2028) | 2026 | 1 | #387 |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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
- What does the name Mwaka mean, and where does it come from?
- year Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Mwaka have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 8.1 thousand people named Mwaka in Kenya, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mwaka.
- How common is the name Mwaka?
- In Belgium, the national register counted 5 people named Mwaka in 2008, about 1 in 2.3 million residents.
- How common is Mwaka compared with other names?
- In Kenya, Mwaka is the 686th most common surname of 179,147 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mwaka?
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/mwakaThe 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, “Mwaka” — the 686th most common surname in Kenya. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.