Wanjala
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Luya (Kenya): 'famine'; probably related to Kiswahili njaa kuu 'great hunger'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/wɑⁿɗʒala/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wanjala is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Kenya than in any other country, where it is the 15th most common surname.
- KEKenya≈1 in 541(inferred from the name graph)
- UGUganda≈1 in 28K
- TZTanzania≈1 in 70K
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.
- Kenya (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 63 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 541 (inferred from the name graph)
≈99,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Kenya, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Luya (Kenya): 'famine'; probably related to Kiswahili njaa kuu 'great hunger'
Sources 1
- African Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wanjala 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KE Kenya | #15 | ≈99,000 est. | ≈1 in 541 | 1 | Wanjala | 63 |
| UG Uganda | #792 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 28K | — | Wanjala | 17 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈830 est. | ≈1 in 70K | 1 | Wanjala | 9 |
| US United States | — | ≈50 est. | ≈1 in 6.7M | listed | Wanjala | 58 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈14 est. | ≈1 in 16M | listed | — | 3 |
| NL Netherlands | — | ≈8 est. | ≈1 in 2.1M | — | Wanjala | 5 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 7 | 1 in 1.2M | 7 | — | 1 |
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: Mzalendo Trust "Elections Watch" — 2022 gazetted election winners; the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results; 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Wanjala is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Bom during a famine
as a nameA Handbook of African 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.
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 8 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 7 | #79,838 |
| KE Kenya | Mzalendo Trust "Elections Watch" — 2022 gazetted election winners | 2022 | 1 | #1,428 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
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 Wanjala mean, and where does it come from?
- Luya (Kenya): 'famine'; probably related to Kiswahili njaa kuu 'great hunger' Recorded by African Names.
- How do you pronounce Wanjala?
- A machine transcription gives /wɑⁿɗʒala/ (IPA) for Swahili.
- In which country does Wanjala have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 99 thousand people named Wanjala in Kenya, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wanjala.
- How common is the name Wanjala?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 7 people named Wanjala in 2024, about 1 in 1.2 million residents.
- How common is Wanjala compared with other names?
- In Kenya, Wanjala is the 15th most common surname of 179,147 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wanjala?
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/wanjalaThe 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, “Wanjala” — the 15th most common surname in Kenya. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.