Swai
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Synonym of iridescent shark (“a shark catfish of species Pangasianodon hypophthalmus”)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/swɑi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Swai is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country, where it is the 55th most common surname.
- TZTanzania≈1 in 851(inferred from the name graph)
- KEKenya≈1 in 312K
- SYSyria≈1 in 357K
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.
- Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 59 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 851 (inferred from the name graph)
≈69,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Tanzania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Synonym of iridescent shark (“a shark catfish of species Pangasianodon hypophthalmus”).
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Swai 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TZ Tanzania | #55 | ≈69,000 est. | ≈1 in 851 | 1 | Swai | 44 |
| IN India | — | 365 | 1 in 3.6M | 365 | Swai | 13 |
| KE Kenya | — | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 312K | — | Swai | 7 |
| SY Syria | — | ≈54 est. | ≈1 in 357K | — | Swai | 7 |
| US United States | — | ≈53 est. | ≈1 in 6.3M | listed | Swai | 59 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | — | ≈25 est. | ≈1 in 1.4M | — | Swai | 5 |
| KW Kuwait | — | ≈3 est. | ≈1 in 987K | — | Swai | 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: INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; the us-wru-surnames-voterfile 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)
Swai 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 cdo, A country brogue, sometimes used for (s"i， to employ.
as a wordAn Alphabetic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Foochow Dialect
In egy, Manuel de Codage transliteration of swꜣj.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In trv, younger, junior
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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.
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 12 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 365 | #11,648 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 22 | #10,560 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 6 | #128,791 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Swai mean, and where does it come from?
- Synonym of iridescent shark (“a shark catfish of species Pangasianodon hypophthalmus”). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Swai?
- A machine transcription gives /swɑi/ (IPA) for Swahili.
- In which country does Swai have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 69 thousand people named Swai in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled swai.
- How common is the name Swai?
- In India, the national register counted 365 people named Swai, about 1 in 3.6 million residents.
- How common is Swai compared with other names?
- In Tanzania, Swai is the 55th most common surname of 112,969 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Swai?
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/swaiThe 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, “Swai” — the 55th most common surname in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.