Soma
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Swahili: 'to read; to go to school' (also Hindi: 'moon') (African Names)
Used for both men and women, depending on the country· national registers that list names by sex disagree
- Hungary (Nyilvántartó, 2025): listed as male
- United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed under both sexes
- Norway (SSB): listed as female
- Finland (DVV): listed under both sexes
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 33 countries · latest register: Nyilvántartó, 2025
Soma is a given name used for both men and women, depending on the country, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country. Soma is also written โสมา in Thai.
- HUHungary1 in 1.9K(measured from records)
- INIndia≈1 in 4.7K
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 5.8K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Soma itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 163 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈310,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Hungary
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Soma in other scripts: Thai
(measured from records)Locally spelled Shoma in SA Saudi Arabia, KW Kuwait and Shuma in TZ Tanzania.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Swahili: 'to read; to go to school' (also Hindi: 'moon')
Cited for this meaning 1
- African Names
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Soma 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | #477 | ≈310,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.7K | 2.3K | Soma | 163 |
| BD Bangladesh | #676 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.8K | — | Soma | 31 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | — | ≈8,300 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | — | Shoma | 8 |
| HU Hungary | — | 5,201 | 1 in 1.9K | 5.2K | — | — |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈5,100 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Shuma | 5 |
| KW Kuwait | — | ≈540 est. | ≈1 in 9.1K | — | Shoma | 5 |
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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Nyilvántartó — Top-100 given names in population (2020–2025). 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)Soma 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 pi, A deva to whom sacrifice is offered; he is generally mentioned with Varuṇa, Pajāpati and Yama.’ I n the Āṭānāṭiya Sutta^ he is spoken of as a Yakkha chief. He is identified with the Moongod of later literature.’ the founder of the Somavaṃsa (dynasty). 28; vf. 201, 568, 571. E.g., CVI lxif. 5; lxiii. 14.
as a nameDictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol II (N-H)
In pi, A Yavapāla who offered grass for his seat to Kassapa Buddha.’
as a nameDictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol II (N-H)
Ardhanarigvara (N); Hanuman (N); Jina (N);
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
moon, born in lunar month Cancer
as a nameA Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India
To read; go to school.
as a nameThe African book of names
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)- Soma Morgensternb. 1890ATAustrian writer (1890-1976)
- Soma Novothnyb. 1994HUHungarian footballer (born 1994)
- Soma Chhayab. 1998CACanadian actress
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)64 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 33 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Soma a male or female name?
- Soma is used for both men and women, depending on the country. National registers that list names by sex disagree: Hungary (Nyilvántartó, 2025): listed as male; United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed under both sexes; Norway (SSB): listed as female; Finland (DVV): listed under both sexes. We don't publish a percentage split.
- What does the name Soma mean, and where does it come from?
- Swahili: 'to read; to go to school' (also Hindi: 'moon') Recorded by African Names.
- Which countries have the most people named Soma?
- Mondonomo estimates about 307 thousand people named Soma in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled soma. After it come Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Hungary and Tanzania; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Soma most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Soma is densest in Hungary — about 1 in 1.9 thousand people — even though India holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Soma?
- In Hungary, the national register counted 5,201 people named Soma in 2025, about 1 in 1.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Soma compared with other names?
- In India, Soma is the 477th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Soma?
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/somaThe 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, “Soma” — ranked 2872nd in India (Instate). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.