Neema
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Swahili: Swahili: born at a prosperous time; grace/favor of God
A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 27 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025
/neema/(machine-generated) Swahili · model-generated
Neema is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country.
- TZTanzania≈1 in 110(inferred from the name graph)
- KEKenya≈1 in 3.1Kfew records
- INIndia≈1 in 79K
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 Neema 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.
- Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 194 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 105 (inferred from the name graph)
≈650,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Tanzania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)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)Swahili: born at a prosperous time; grace/favor of God
Cited for this meaning 1
- African Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Neema is read
(measured from records)Neema is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- Swahili55%
Swahili: born at a prosperous time; grace/favor of God
as a nameAfrican Names
grace (free and undeserved favour, especially of God)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Hindi25%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Neema in Hindi.
- English12%
Swahili; pleasantness, grace
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Neema 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TZ Tanzania | #133 | ≈650,000 est. | ≈1 in 105 | 36 | Neema | 35 |
| IN India | — | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 79K | 1K | Neema | 97 |
| KE Kenya | — | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | listed | Neema | 15 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | — | ≈8,100 est. | ≈1 in 13K | 2 | Neema | 5 |
| US United States | — | 1,504 | 1 in 221K | 1.2K | Neema | 194 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | — | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 69K | — | Neema | 25 |
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; Heuristic parse of census.name; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; the swahili-book-names-zawawi-1993 register; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)Neema 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.
Born during prosperous times
as a nameThe book of African names
to be well off.
as a nameAfrican Names
Grace.
as a nameThe African book of 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)- Neema Namadamub. 1901CDwomen's and disability rights activist in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Neema Aacharyab. 1947INIndian politician
- Neema William Mgayab. 1980TZTanzanian politician
- Joella Neema Sambob. 1994CDCongolese politician
- Neema Bakhshalianb. 2000USresearcher
- Neema ParviniGBBritish academic
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)51 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.2K | #9,298 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 324 | #9,298 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 31 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2005 | 5 | — |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 2 | #382 |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2016 | 1 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2010 | 1 | — |
| KE Kenya | What's in a Name (Zawawi, 1993) | — | — | — |
| IN India | Indian names with gender (Kaggle) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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
- Is Neema a male or female name?
- Neema is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: United States (Census Bureau, 2020) and Norway (SSB).
- What does the name Neema mean, and where does it come from?
- Swahili: born at a prosperous time; grace/favor of God Recorded by African Names.
- How do you pronounce Neema?
- In Swahili /neema/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- In which country does Neema have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 652 thousand people named Neema in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled neema.
- How common is the name Neema?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,504 people named Neema in 2020, about 1 in 221 thousand residents.
- How common is Neema compared with other names?
- In Tanzania, Neema is the 133rd most common given name of 37,285 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Neema?
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/neemaThe 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, “Neema” — the 133rd most common given name in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.