Ngaio
given name · Latin script
Meaning: New Zealand name, pronounced ‘nyeoh’: apparently from the Maori word ngaio which, among other things, means ‘clever’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Ngaio is a given name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- NZNew Zealand
- AUAustralia
- GBUnited Kingdom
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
New Zealand name, pronounced ‘nyeoh’: apparently from the Maori word ngaio which, among other things, means ‘clever’. Ngai is also a prefix meaning ‘tribe’ or ‘clan’; the given name may have originated as a tribal name. Ngaire ° New Zealand (Maori) name, pronounced ‘nye-ree’: of unknown origin. It is usually Anglicized as Nyree. See also pNgaio. Nia @ Welsh form of the Irish name Niamh.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Ngaio 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 English, An evergreen tree of species Myoporum laetum, native to New Zealand.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, aus Neuseeland stammender weibl.
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Variantes: Nemesia, Nemesiana
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
New Zealand: from the name of a type of tree cultivated for its wood, originally named in Maori.
as a word
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)
- Ngaio Marshb. 1895NZNew Zealand writer (1895–1982)
- Rona Ngaio Flemingb. 1896NZNew Zealand artist (1896-1976)
- Ngaio J BeausoleilNZanimal welfare researcher at Massey University, New Zealand
- Rowena TanaNZnot in their usual nameNew Zealand Māori community leader
- Ngaio Te UaNZNew Zealand artist
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 11 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 1 | #110 |
| DM Dominica | Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025 | 2025 | 1 | #159 |
| AU Australia | SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present) | 2009 | 1 | — |
| AU Australia | SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present) | 1973 | 1 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2002 | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | A Concise Dictionary of First Names (Hanks & Hodges, 2001) | — | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | Babynamen — Lijst met meer dan 22.000 namen (Amelia King, 2020) | — | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | The Penguin Book of Baby Names (David Pickering) | — | — | — |
| ES Spain | 25,000 Nombres de Bebé (Vázquez de Haro, 2005) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- 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 Ngaio mean, and where does it come from?
- New Zealand name, pronounced ‘nyeoh’: apparently from the Maori word ngaio which, among other things, means ‘clever’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Ngaio a male or female name?
- Ngaio 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 Ngaio have the most bearers?
- Ngaio is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Ngaio?
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/ngaioThe 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, “Ngaio”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.