Palesa

given name · Latin script

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

Palesa is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country. In Lesotho it is the 70th most common given name. Recorded meaning: flower.

rarermore common
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 1.7K(inferred from the name graph)
  • BWBotswana≈1 in 5.4K
  • LSLesotho≈1 in 46K

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.

South Africa (inferred from the name graph)

≈34,000 people, est.

Sources
78 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.7K (inferred from the name graph)

South Africa, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

flower

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world(measured from records)

Palesa 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 Palesa is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ZA South Africa#279≈34,000 est.≈1 in 1.7K—Palesa78
BW Botswana#254≈430 est.≈1 in 5.4K—Palesa5
US United States—≈65 est.≈1 in 5.1M—Palesa66
LS Lesotho#70≈43 est.≈1 in 46K3Palesa8
ID Indonesia—≈25 est.≈1 in 11Mlisted—14
NL Netherlands—≈11 est.≈1 in 1.6M—Palesa3
GY Guyana—61 in 125K6Palesa1

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: Lesotho IEC 2022 National Assembly candidate lists; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)

Palesa is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Catalan, feminine singular of palès

    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)

19801990Palesa Sekhonyana, b. 1986Palesa Mokubung, b. 1990Palesa Molefe, b. 1990Palesa Natasha Mothapo, b. 1990Palesa R Sekhejane, b. 1990

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 18 sources across 14 countries.

Reference works 2

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 Palesa mean, and where does it come from?
flower Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Palesa have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 34 thousand people named Palesa in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled palesa.
Is Palesa a male or female name?
Palesa 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.
How common is the name Palesa?
In Guyana, the national register counted 6 people named Palesa in 2025, about 1 in 125 thousand residents.
How common is Palesa compared with other names?
In South Africa, Palesa is the 279th most common given name of 189,620 given names recorded there.

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/palesa

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Palesa” — the 279th most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Palesa parses inside a full name →