Nawi

surname · Latin script

Meaning: A barangay of Paranas, Samar, Philippines

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

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

rarermore common
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 5.8K(inferred from the name graph)
  • IDIndonesia≈1 in 52K
  • TNTunisia≈1 in 65K

carrying the name, as Mondonomo estimates it from our sources: no national register counts it in these countries. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)

≈5,600 people, est.

Sources
69 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 5.8K (inferred from the name graph)

Malaysia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

A barangay of Paranas, Samar, Philippines.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world(measured from records)

Nawi 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 Nawi is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
MY Malaysia#208≈5,600 est.≈1 in 5.8KNawi54
ID Indonesia—≈5,100 est.≈1 in 52KNawi69
PH Philippines—≈310 est.≈1 in 357KNawi6
MA Morocco—≈300 est.≈1 in 117KNawi9
TN Tunisia—≈180 est.≈1 in 65KNawi6
IL Israel—≈66 est.≈1 in 131KNawi5

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.

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)

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

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Nawī

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Philippines, Argentina, United States

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Ñawi

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Malaysia

    Also written Nawî, Ñawi

40 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)

Nawi is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, natural science, Naturwissenschaften

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In mqs, palm wine

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In ebk, eagle

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In nht, four.

    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)

  • Ezra Nawib. 1951ILIsraeli radical left activist
  • Roy Nawib. 2004ILIsraeli association footballer

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 9 sources across 5 countries.

Reference works 3

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname 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 Nawi mean, and where does it come from?
A barangay of Paranas, Samar, Philippines. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Nawi have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 5.6 thousand people named Nawi in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nawi.
How common is the name Nawi?
Mondonomo estimates about 5,600 people in Malaysia have Nawi as their first surname, about 1 in 5.8 thousand residents. No national register counts it there; the figure is ours, calibrated against the registers that do.
How common is Nawi compared with other names?
In Malaysia, Nawi is the 208th most common surname of 291,743 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Nawi?

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

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, “Nawi” — the 208th most common surname in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Nawi parses inside a full name →