Okawa
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/oʊˈkɑwə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Okawa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Japan than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Japanese 大川 (Ōkawa).
- JPJapan≈1 in 5.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- EEEstonia≈1 in 175K
- BRBrazil1 in 572K
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.
- Japan (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 108 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈23,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Japan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Borrowed from Japanese 大川 (Ōkawa).
Sources 1
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Okawa 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JP Japan | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | — | Okawa | 108 |
| BR Brazil | 370 | 1 in 572K | 370 | — | — |
| US United States | 342 | 1 in 973K | 342 | Okawa | 83 |
| PH Philippines | ≈51 est. | ≈1 in 2.1M | — | Okawa | 7 |
| CA Canada | ≈49 est. | ≈1 in 775K | — | Okawa | 12 |
| SG Singapore | ≈10 est. | ≈1 in 623K | — | Okawa | 6 |
| EE Estonia | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 175K | listed | — | 1 |
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 — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Ōkawa Heizaburōb. 1860JP(1860-1936)
- Shūmei Ōkawab. 1886JPJapanese nationalist intellectual (1886–1957)
- Hiroshi Ōkawab. 1896JPbusinessman, film producer, owner of baseball team
- Tomi Ōkawab. 1932JPJapanese table tennis player
- Ryūhō Ōkawab. 1956JPJapanese religious leader who founded the world religion "Happy Science" (1956-2023)
- Hiroshi Ōkawab. 1956JPJapanese baseball player
- Tōru Ōkawab. 1960JPJapanese voice actor
- Yoku Hatab. 1975JPnot in their usual nameJapanese comedian
- Genki Ōkawab. 1987JPJapanese actor, voice actor and singer
- Mio ŌkawaJPJapanese voice actress
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 11 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 370 | #22,185 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 342 | #59,171 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 314 | #67,683 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 313 | #60,230 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- Wikipedia surname tokens
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 Okawa mean, and where does it come from?
- Borrowed from Japanese 大川 (Ōkawa). Recorded by Wiktionary.
- How do you pronounce Okawa?
- A machine transcription gives /oʊˈkɑwə/ (IPA) for Japanese.
- In which country does Okawa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 23 thousand people named Okawa in Japan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled okawa.
- How common is the name Okawa?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 370 people named Okawa, about 1 in 572 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Okawa?
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/okawaThe 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, “Okawa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.