Pensa
surname · Latin script
Meaning: var. regional de Bensa
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/pɛnsa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pensa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country.
- ARArgentina1 in 59K(measured from records)
- EEEstonia≈1 in 24K
- HRCroatia1 in 34K
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.
- Italy (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 43 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 24K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,100 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Estonia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
var. regional de Bensa
Sources 1
- Dicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pensa 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IT Italy | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 54K | listed | Pensa | 13 |
| AR Argentina | 773 | 1 in 59K | 773 | Pensa | 43 |
| US United States | 284 | 1 in 1.2M | 284 | Pensa | 40 |
| HR Croatia | 124 | 1 in 34K | 124 | — | — |
| FR France | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 582K | 5 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 93 | 1 in 90K | 93 | — | 3 |
| EE Estonia | ≈51 est. | ≈1 in 24K | 70 | — | 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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); the xinhua-italian-manual register; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); the ee-stat-nimed register. 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)
Pensa 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 Finnish, alternative form of bensa (“gasoline, gas”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, third-person singular past historic of penser
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, a day's provisions; ration for a day.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Catalan, thought (the facility to think)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Danish, indefinite plural of pensum
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)
- Henri Pensab. 1865FRFrench politician and writer (1865-1946)
- Antonio Pensab. 1874ITItalian anatomist (1874-1970)
- Pietro Pensab. 1906ITItalian writer and engineer (1906–1996)
- Carlo Maria Pensab. 1921ITjournalist and playwright
- Lily Romanellib. 1930ITnot in their usual nameItalian actress and singer (1930–2021)
- Dunja Jadek Pensab. 1959SISlovenian jurist
- Pietro Pensab. 1960ITItalian engineer
- Iolanda Pensab. 1975CHItalian and Swiss art critic, writer and researcher
- Martin Pensab. 2000CACanadian film editor
- Pavle PensaSIresearcher
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 26 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 773 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 284 | #69,170 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 269 | #76,963 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 259 | #70,473 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 124 | #6,559 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 122 | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 93 | #11,723 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 70 | #1,221 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 41 | #2,451 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 19 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 18 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 17 | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Pensa mean, and where does it come from?
- var. regional de Bensa Recorded by Dicionário dos sobrenomes italianos.
- How do you pronounce Pensa?
- A machine transcription gives /pɛnsa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Pensa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.1 thousand people named Pensa in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pensa.
- How common is the name Pensa?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 773 people named Pensa, about 1 in 59 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Pensa?
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/pensaThe 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, “Pensa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.