Toa
loc · Latin script
Meaning: A small painted artifact made by the Diyari people of Australia, believed to have been used as place markers or signposts
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 20 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Toa is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Côte d’Ivoire than in any other country.
- VUVanuatu≈1 in 910(inferred from the name graph)
- CICôte d’Ivoire≈1 in 40K
- USUnited States1 in 1.5M
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). 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.
- Côte d’Ivoire (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 96 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 910 (inferred from the name graph)
≈680 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Vanuatu, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled To'A in AU Australia, NZ New Zealand.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)A small painted artifact made by the Diyari people of Australia, believed to have been used as place markers or signposts.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Toa 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | ≈680 est. | ≈1 in 40K | 665 | — | 1 |
| VU Vanuatu | ≈330 est. | ≈1 in 910 | 2 | — | 3 |
| US United States | 219 | 1 in 1.5M | 261 | Toa | 96 |
| AU Australia | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 178K | 1 | To'A | 52 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 46K | 11 | To'A | 44 |
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 2020; nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); Vanuatu Electoral Office — 2022 Snap Election consolidated candidate list. 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)Toa 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 Akan, pL n-, calabash, gourd and the plant producing it; pr. 599
as a wordDictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi)
In Swedish, synonym of toalett (“toilet; bathroom”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In fj, fowl
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In mnv, ironwood (none on Bellona, and on Rennell only on cliffs; in ancient times ceremonial paddles were placed at the bases of cliffs, and with proper incantations _toa_ branches were said to have fallen down); reddish, finely-branching coral on the sea bottom; when taken ashore _toa_ turns black; named for the ironwood
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In fj, two kinds of fish: a round fish like the (thornless pufferfish), and a rather squarish variety
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.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Kim Do-ahb. 2003KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean singer
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).
Evidence
(measured from records)31 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies | — | 665 | #768 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 261 | #78,873 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 219 | #85,357 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 190 | #90,252 |
| VU Vanuatu | Vanuatu Electoral Office — 2020 General Election consolidated candidate list | 2020 | 1 | #4 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Toa mean, and where does it come from?
- A small painted artifact made by the Diyari people of Australia, believed to have been used as place markers or signposts. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Toa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 681 people named Toa in Côte d’Ivoire, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Toa?
- In the United States, the national register counted 219 people named Toa in 2010, about 1 in 1.5 million residents.
What do you want to know about Toa?
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/toaThe 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, “Toa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.