Mǎ

given name · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Mǎ is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Hakka 馬／马 (mǎ).

rarermore common
  • CACanada≈1 in 41K(inferred from the name graph)
  • NONorway1 in 15K
  • ISIceland1 in 18K

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.

United States (measured from records)

16,450 people, 2020

Record sources
266 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 15K (inferred from the name graph)

Norway

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Ma in US United States and M-A in CA Canada.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

From Hakka 馬／马 (mǎ).

Cited for this meaning 9

Attested across 28 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

(measured from records)

Mǎ 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 Mǎ is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States16,4501 in 20K38KMa266
CA Canada≈930 est.≈1 in 41K—M-A65
NO Norway3661 in 15K740—17
BR Brazil2951 in 718K5.4K—2
DK Denmark1581 in 37K198——
IS Iceland201 in 18K20——

16,450 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)

Mǎ is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Arabic surname116 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia

    Languages: Arabic, Maltese

    Also written Ma, Mặ, Ḿą, Mã, Mä

  • Chinese surname13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tunisia

    Also written Ma, Mà, M-A, Má, Mä

  • a separate surname39 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, India, Mexico

    Also written Ma, Mă, Mà, Mã, Mä

1 further group 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)

Mǎ 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 Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin reading of 吔

    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)
12001400160018002000Zheng He, b. 1371Ma Huan, b. 1380Ma Fuxiang, b. 1876Ma Bufang, b. 1903Ma Ying-jeou, b. 1950Yo-Yo Ma, b. 1955Tzi Ma, b. 1962Jack Ma, b. 1964Ma Huateng, b. 1971Ma Jin, b. 1988
  • Zheng Heb. 1371CNnot in their usual nameChinese mariner, explorer, and diplomat
  • Ma Huanb. 1380CNMing dynasty translator, voyager and writer
  • Ma Fuxiangb. 1876CNChinese politician (1876–1932)
  • Ma Bufangb. 1903CNChinese politician (1903-1975)
  • Ma Ying-jeoub. 1950TW12th and 13th President of Republic of China(Taiwan)
  • Yo-Yo Mab. 1955FRAmerican cellist (born 1955)
  • Tzi Mab. 1962USHong Kong American actor
  • Jack Mab. 1964CNChinese businessman
  • Ma Huatengb. 1971CNChinese internet entrepreneur (1971-)
  • Ma Jinb. 1988CNChinese badminton 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).

Evidence

(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Mǎ under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Mǎ mean, and where does it come from?
From Hakka 馬／马 (mǎ). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Russian Names and 7 other sources.
Is Mǎ a male or female name?
Mǎ is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
In which country does Mǎ have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 16 thousand people named Mǎ, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ma.
Where is Mǎ most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Mǎ is densest in Norway — about 1 in 15 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Mǎ?
In the United States, the national register counted 16,450 people named Mǎ in 2020, about 1 in 20 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Mǎ?

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

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/m%C7%8E

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, “Mǎ”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Mǎ parses inside a full name →