Poppa

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: father, papa

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

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

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

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 916K(measured from records)
  • ITItaly≈1 in 145K
  • CACanada≈1 in 587K

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)

≈430 people, est.

Sources
140 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 145K (inferred from the name graph)

Italy, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

father, papa.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

How Poppa is read(measured from records)

Poppa is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • English72%

    father, papa.

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

    informal for father

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • Spanish8.0%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Poppa in Spanish.

  • Italian5.6%

    breast, boob

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

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Poppa 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 Poppa is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IT Italy≈430 est.≈1 in 145KlistedPoppa9
US United States3631 in 916K373Poppa140
DE Germany≈74 est.≈1 in 1.1M—Poppa33
CA Canada≈64 est.≈1 in 587K—Poppa19
GB United Kingdom≈43 est.≈1 in 1.5M29Poppa26
AU Australia≈38 est.≈1 in 669K—Poppa15
CH Switzerland141 in 600K14—2

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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); the xinhua-italian-manual register; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)

Poppa is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Italian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, Spain, United States

    Also written Pöppà

30 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)

Poppa is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Swedish, to pop (popcorn)

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

  • In Icelandic, to make popcorn

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

  • In Maltese, stern, poop

    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)

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 Mr Poppa,
InformalHi Poppa,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 14 sources across 8 countries.

Official registers attesting Poppa
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000373#52,289
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010363#56,310
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020356#61,001
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)200229#71,549
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202414#47,506
IT Italy意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual)———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

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

What does the name Poppa mean, and where does it come from?
father, papa. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Poppa?
A machine transcription gives /pɒpə/ (IPA) for English.
What are other forms of the name Poppa?
In the etymology graph, Papa is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Poppa have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 429 people named Poppa in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled poppa.
How common is the name Poppa?
In the United States, the national register counted 363 people named Poppa in 2010, about 1 in 916 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Poppa?

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/poppa

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, “Poppa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Poppa parses inside a full name →