Pona

surname · Latin script

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

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

Pona is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • ARArgentina1 in 110K(measured from records)
  • PLPoland1 in 151K
  • PTPortugal≈1 in 235K

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.

Argentina (measured from records)

414 people

Sources
33 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 110K (inferred from the name graph)

Argentina

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin

No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.

Sources 1

Where in the world(measured from records)

Pona 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 Pona is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AR Argentina4141 in 110K414Pona31
PL Poland2541 in 151K133——
PH Philippines≈230 est.≈1 in 480K—Pona9
US United States1951 in 1.7M195Pona29
FR France≈160 est.≈1 in 413K12——
PT Portugal≈44 est.≈1 in 235K—Pona18
BE Belgium371 in 317K37—1

414 people counted by RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)

Pona is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, Australia, South Africa

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Pöna

  • Ukrainian surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Ukrainian, Russian, Polish

    Also written Пона

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, United States, Philippines

    Also written Poña

39 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)

Pona is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Māori, node or knot of grass stalks etc

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

  • In ty, joint (of fingers and limbs)

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

  • In Hawaiian, node of bamboo or sugarcanes

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

  • In Swahili, to heal, to recover

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

  • In lld, then; later

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

  • In ktu, to choose

    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)

150016001700180019002000Francesco Pona, b. 1595Abdoulaye Pona, b. 1954Nicolas Pona, b. 1968

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 21 sources across 12 countries.

Official registers attesting Pona
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—414—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010195#93,921
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020180#105,671
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000173#97,384
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026133—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—133#23,328
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026121—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—121#25,745
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)200837#32,276
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)196113—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)199112—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)193111—

Reference works 3

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

How do you pronounce Pona?
A machine transcription gives /pənə/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Pona have the most bearers?
In Argentina, the national register counted about 414 people named Pona, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pona.
Where is Pona most common?
Pona is densest in Argentina, where the national register counts about 1 in 110 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Pona?
In Argentina, the national register counted 414 people named Pona, about 1 in 110 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Pona?

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/pona

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, “Pona”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Pona parses inside a full name →