Penha
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Penha (a municipality of Santa Catarina, Brazil)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/peɲɐ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Penha is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country.
- BRBrazil≈1 in 5.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 1.5M
- PTPortugal≈1 in 21K
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.
- Brazil (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 146 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈41,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Brazil, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Penha (a municipality of Santa Catarina, Brazil)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Penha 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | #173 | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | 7.3K | Penha | 146 |
| PT Portugal | — | ≈490 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Penha | 47 |
| US United States | — | 227 | 1 in 1.5M | 270 | Penha | 117 |
| IN India | — | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 7.1M | 7 | Penha | 6 |
| CO Colombia | — | ≈89 est. | ≈1 in 554K | — | Penha | 21 |
| PY Paraguay | — | ≈27 est. | ≈1 in 268K | — | Penha | 5 |
| FI Finland | — | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 347K | 10 | — | 4 |
| UY Uruguay | — | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 502K | — | Penha | 4 |
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: IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; the in-instate-surnames-bystate register; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
- João Penhab. 1838PTPortuguese poet
- Michael Penhab. 1888NLDutch-American cellist (1888–1982)
- Elly Penhab. 1891NLDutch pianist, 1891-1914
- Sergio Penhab. 1959USAmerican martial artist
- Cátia Rodriguesb. 1968BRnot in their usual nameProtestant pastor and Brazilian politician, councilor of the city of Salvador
- Rui Penhab. 1981PTPortuguese musician
- Mônica Penhab. 1981BRBrazilian politician, deputy mayor of Macapá
- Thalles Lima de Conceição Penhab. 1995BRBrazilian association football player
- Mariana Penhab. 2002PTPortuguese association football player
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 18 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 103K | #273 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 270 | #76,719 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 227 | #82,908 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 162 | #102,691 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 7 | #1,714 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Penha mean, and where does it come from?
- Penha (a municipality of Santa Catarina, Brazil) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Penha?
- A machine transcription gives /peɲɐ/ (IPA) for Portuguese.
- What are other forms of the name Penha?
- In the etymology graph, Peña is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Penha have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 41 thousand people named Penha in Brazil, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled penha.
- How common is the name Penha?
- In the United States, the national register counted 227 people named Penha in 2010, about 1 in 1.5 million residents.
- How common is Penha compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Penha is the 173rd most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Penha?
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/penhaThe 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, “Penha” — the 173rd most common surname in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.