Najma
given name · Latin script
Meaning: star. See Kawkab GS 5S; Najm aas
A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 28 countries · latest register: naampy, 2016
Najma is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country. In Bangladesh it is the 49th most common given name.
- INIndia≈1 in 3.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- KEKenya≈1 in 6.7K
- PKPakistan≈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). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Najma itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 280 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈380,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
India, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Naima in MA Morocco, ES Spain, DZ Algeria and 2 more and Nazma in BD Bangladesh.
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)star. See Kawkab GS 5S; Najm aas
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of Muslim Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Najma 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | #656 | ≈380,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.8K | 87 | Najma | 75 |
| BD Bangladesh | #49 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | listed | Nazma | 57 |
| MA Morocco | #50 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 280 | listed | Naima | 78 |
| DZ Algeria | #129 | ≈67,000 est. | ≈1 in 697 | — | Naima | 45 |
| PK Pakistan | #146 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 11K | listed | Najma | 55 |
| TZ Tanzania | #343 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | — | Naima | 24 |
| TN Tunisia | #193 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 984 | 1.6K | Naima | 28 |
| ES Spain | — | 9,873as Naima | 1 in 5.1K | 9.9K | Naima | 45 |
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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; the pk-muslim-names-cc0 register; the ma-etatcivil-authorized-given-names register; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INS Tunisia — Les prénoms des nouveau-nés les plus populaires (2022). 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)Najma 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 Arabic, star; a fine species of grass
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
In Arabic, star
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
In German, ) Nejma ['naed3ma]; (einge
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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)- Najma Heptullab. 1940INIndian politician
- Najma Chowdhuryb. 1942BDBangladeshi academic
- Najma Idreesb. 1952KWKuwaiti writer and poet
- Najma Akhtarb. 1962GBsinger
- Najma Gigab. 1967TZTanzanian politician
- Najma Kousrib. 1991TNTunisian feminist and LGBT rights activist
- Najma Baseerb. 2000GBresearcher
- Najma Arshadb. 2000PKresearcher
- Najma SiddiqiGBresearcher
- Najma MemonPKresearcher (ORCID 0000-0002-3241-8423)
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)49 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | India Names Dataset — Andhra Pradesh Electoral Rolls (Internet Archive) | — | 5.9K | #831 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 264 | #7,284 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 225 | #3,721 |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2016 | 4 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2015 | 3 | — |
| MA Morocco | Liste des prénoms d'usage au Maroc — official authorized given-names list | — | — | — |
| PK Pakistan | Muslim given names (CC0) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Najma mean, and where does it come from?
- star. See Kawkab GS 5S; Najm aas Recorded by A Dictionary of Muslim Names.
- Is Najma a male or female name?
- Najma is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: India (India Names Dataset), United States (Census Bureau, 2020), Norway (SSB) and Spain (INE), among others.
- In which country does Najma have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 384 thousand people named Najma in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled najma.
- How common is the name Najma?
- In Spain, the national register counted 9,873 people named Naima, about 1 in 5.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Najma compared with other names?
- In India, Najma is the 656th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Najma?
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/najmaThe 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, “Najma” — the 656th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.