Ola

given name · Latin script

Meaning: Ibo (Nigeria): 'precious, worth'; also Yoruba (Nigeria): male name meaning 'wealth'

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/ola/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Ola is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • SESweden1 in 477(measured from records)
  • SYSyria≈1 in 1.4K
  • NGNigeria≈1 in 2.3K

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.

Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)

≈94,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
347 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 477 (inferred from the name graph)

Sweden

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

OlaLatin(measured from records)
ოლაGeorgian(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)

Ibo (Nigeria): 'precious, worth'; also Yoruba (Nigeria): male name meaning 'wealth'

Sources 1

  • African Names

Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Ola 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 Ola is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NG Nigeria#388≈94,000 est.≈1 in 2.3K—Ola113
EG Egypt#293≈40,000 est.≈1 in 2.6K—Ola110
SE Sweden#77421,3911 in 47721KOla84
SY Syria#203≈14,000 est.≈1 in 1.4K—Ola34
NO Norway#9699,3131 in 58733KOla72
JO Jordan#465≈7,200 est.≈1 in 1.5K—Ola67

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: SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Ola is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Swedish given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Sweden, United States, Norway, United Kingdom

    Languages: Swedish, Icelandic

    Also written Óla

  • Polish given name34 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, Russia, United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Czech

    Also written Ола, 'Ola, Ol'A, Oľa, Olâ

  • Indonesian given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Nigeria, Malaysia, United States

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Ola', Õla, Öla

  • Finnish given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Sweden, Nigeria, Finland, United States

    Also written Óla, Ölä, Õlå, Olä, Õla

68 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)

Ola is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Polish, wait!

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

  • In Swedish, Ola är en yngre (sydlig och västsvensk) form av → Olav. En känd svensk namnbärare är artisten Ola Salo (f. 1977). Namnet är vanligt i Norge där Ola Nordmann får beteckna den genomsnittlige norrmannen. I den rikssvenska almanackan 19 april och i den finlandssvenska 29 juli.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In Russian, 11 (24) juillet. Olga est son équivalent français. Fête : 11 juillet.

    as a nameRussian Names

  • Legado de los antepasados

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

  • Greatness, noble man.

    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)

19201940196019802000Ola Ullsten, b. 1931Ola Källenius, b. 1969Ola Rapace, b. 1971Ola Fløttum, b. 1972Ola Toivonen, b. 1986Ola Svensson, b. 1986Ola Kamara, b. 1989Ola John, b. 1992Ola Aina, b. 1996Ola Solbakken, b. 1998

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)

InformalHi Ola,

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)

Attested in 80 sources across 41 countries.

Reference works 4

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 Ola mean, and where does it come from?
Ibo (Nigeria): 'precious, worth'; also Yoruba (Nigeria): male name meaning 'wealth' Recorded by African Names.
Is Ola a male or female name?
Ola is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
How common is the name Ola?
In Sweden, the national register counted 21,391 people named Ola, about 1 in 477 residents.
How common is Ola compared with other names?
In Nigeria, Ola is the 388th most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
How do you pronounce Ola?
A machine transcription gives /ola/ (IPA) for English.
What are other forms of the name Ola?
In the etymology graph, Sandra, Alex and Sandrine are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Aleksandra and Olaf.
In which country does Ola have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 94 thousand people named Ola in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ola.
Where is Ola most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ola is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 477 people — even though Nigeria holds more of our records for it.

What do you want to know about Ola?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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

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, “Ola” — the 388th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ola parses inside a full name →