Fonua
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Fonua is a surname, most frequently recorded in Australia. In Tonga it is the 5th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script.
- USUnited States1 in 700K◐
- TOTonga1 in 395
- NZNew Zealand1 in 61K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈475 ●
- Sources
- 115 ●
- 1 in 700K ◐
across 1 country
3.9K records
Official registry-verified
United States
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AU Australia | — | 617 | 565 rec. | — | — | Fonua | 61 |
| US United States | — | 475 | 3K rec. | 1 in 700K | 696 | Fonua | 115 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | 123 | 81 rec. | — | — | Fonua | 31 |
| CO Colombia | — | 97 | 99 rec. | — | — | Fonua | 1 |
| CA Canada | — | 79 | 80 rec. | — | — | Fonua | 3 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 13 | 11 rec. | — | — | Fonua | 6 |
| TO Tonga | #5 | 11 | 5 rec. | — | 1.6K | Fonua | 6 |
| IT Italy | — | 9 | 9 rec. | — | — | Fonua | 1 |
| CN China | — | 8 | 8 rec. | — | — | Fonua | 2 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English3.7K84%
- Spanish2646%
- French471%
- Portuguese441%
- Turkish371%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 3,686 | 84% |
| Spanish | 264 | 6% |
| French | 47 | 1% |
| Portuguese | 44 | 1% |
| Turkish | 37 | 1% |
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●
Fonua is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Tongan, land, country, territory, place; people (of the land, etc.); afterbirth, placenta
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Tongan, country (the territory of a nation)
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.
Notable people with this name●
- Opeti Fonuab. 1986TOTongan rugby union player
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 6 sources across 2 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TO Tonga | The page provides detailed information about Tongan surnames, their meanings, and cultural significance, published by su | 2026 | 1.6K | #8 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 696 | #34,947 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 475 | #45,105 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 271 | #67,936 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames (Census 2010 + voter-file supplement) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- Wikipedia surname tokens
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 5 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Fonua?
- We estimate roughly 475 people bear Fonua (counting its spellings and scripts) across 1 country in our records.
- In which country does Fonua have the most bearers?
- Fonua is most frequently recorded in Australia, where it is most often spelled fonua.
- How common is Fonua compared with other names?
- In Tonga, Fonua is the 5th most common surname of 21 surnames recorded there.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/fonuaThe 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, “Fonua” — the 5th most common surname in Tonga. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.