Cossa
surname · Portuguese · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Cossa is a surname, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Mozambique it is the 2nd most common surname. It appears chiefly in Portuguese and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: third-person singular past historic of cosser.
- BRBrazil1 in 226K◐
- MZMozambique1 in 239
- ZASouth Africa1 in 42K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈1.4K ●
- Sources
- 64 ●
- 1 in 138K ◐
across 9 countries
2.0K records
Official registry-verified
Switzerland
Meaning & origin●
third-person singular past historic of cosser
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | — | 936 | 706 rec. | 1 in 226K | 936 | Cossa | 64 |
| ZA South Africa | — | 726 | 825 rec. | — | — | Cossa | 13 |
| MZ Mozambique | #2 | 536 | 273 rec. | — | 7 | Cossa | 46 |
| US United States | — | 196△ | 92 rec. | 1 in 1.7M | 220 | Cossa | 36 |
| AR Argentina | — | 164 | — | 1 in 277K | 164 | — | — |
| IT Italy | — | 72 | 60 rec. | — | listed | Cossa | 26 |
| PT Portugal | — | 64 | 13 rec. | — | — | Cossa | 14 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 61△ | 2 rec. | 1 in 138K | 61 | — | 3 |
| FR France | — | 23 | — | 1 in 2.9M | 23 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | — | 17 | 0 rec. | — | — | Cossa | 2 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 10 | 6 rec. | — | — | Cossa | 6 |
| ES Spain | — | 7△ | 2 rec. | 1 in 7.1M | 7 | — | 1 |
Roughly 936 people in Brazil bear this name (about 1 in 226K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Portuguese3.5K29%
- English3.3K28%
- Spanish2.1K17%
- French1.2K10%
- Italian6505%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Portuguese | 3,500 | 29% |
| English | 3,343 | 28% |
| Spanish | 2,113 | 17% |
| French | 1,222 | 10% |
| Italian | 650 | 5% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Cossa is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Catalan, course where certain footraces and horseback races were run
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In sga, nominative/vocative/accusative plural of cos
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian Nynorsk, to cosplay as something
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In lld, thing, object
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1891 | 2 |
| 1901 | 9 |
| 1911 | 16 |
| 1921 | 8 |
| 1931 | 14 |
| 1941 | 26 |
| 1951 | 22 |
| 1961 | 16 |
| 1971 | 31 |
| 1981 | 16 |
| 1991 | 23 |
FR INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) — 11 years between 1891–1991. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Luigi Cossab. 1789ITItalian engraver (1789-1867)
- Pietro Cossab. 1830IT19th-century Italian dramatist
- Luigi Cossab. 1831ITItalian economist (1831–1896)
- Alfonso Cossab. 1833ITItalian chemist (1833–1902)
- Roberto Cossab. 1934ARArgentinian playwright and theatre director (1934–2024)
- Elisa Cossab. 1980MZMozambican sprinter
- Albino Cossab. 1982MZMozambican footballer
- Anabela Cossab. 1986MZMozambican basketball player (born 1986)
- Pepêb. 1997BRnot in their usual nameBrazilian professional footballer
- Ralph A. CossaUSAmerican air foce colonel (ret.) and national security specialist
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●
Attested in 20 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 936 | #9,863 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 220 | #90,184 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 205 | #84,968 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 196 | #93,513 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 164 | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 61 | #16,013 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 31 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 26 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 23 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 22 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 16 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 16 | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 27 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Cossa?
- We estimate roughly 1.4 thousand people bear Cossa (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
- In which country does Cossa have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 936 people bear Cossa in Brazil, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled cossa.
- How common is Cossa compared with other names?
- In Mozambique, Cossa is the 2nd most common surname of 1,793 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Cossa mean?
- Recorded meaning: third-person singular past historic of cosser
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/cossaThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Cossa” — the 2nd most common surname in Mozambique. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.