Kosa
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Kosa is a surname, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country. It appears chiefly in English and Polish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from kosa ‘scythe’, a metonymic occupational name for a maker of scythes or a metonymic occupational name for a reaper.
- CICôte d’Ivoire1 in 6.5K◐
- ZASouth Africa1 in 26K
- DEGermany1 in 60K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈6.9K ●
- Sources
- 195 ●
- 1 in 7.6K ◐
across 15 countries
26K records
Official registry-verified
Slovenia
Spellings & scripts●
3 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Koza in US United States, PL Poland, DE Germany and 9 more, Kossa in CI Côte d’Ivoire, FR France and Kosar in SA Saudi Arabia, PK Pakistan.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
from kosa ‘scythe’, a metonymic occupational name for a maker of scythes or a metonymic occupational name for a reaper.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | — | 3,701△ | 11 rec. | 1 in 10K | 3.7K | Koza | 1 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | #587 | 2,897 | 63 rec. | — | 958 | Kossa | 8 |
| DE Germany | — | 1,802 | 1.6K rec. | — | listed | Koza | 74 |
| US United States | — | 1,469 | 18K rec. | 1 in 226K | 1.5K | Koza | 195 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 1,212 | 1.2K rec. | — | — | Koza | 32 |
| ZA South Africa | — | 1,181 | 1.2K rec. | — | — | Koza | 21 |
| CA Canada | — | 485 | 486 rec. | — | — | Koza | 32 |
| AU Australia | — | 478 | 508 rec. | — | 1 | Koza | 28 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 471 | 0 rec. | 1 in 23K | 474 | — | 1 |
| IN India | — | 371△ | 121 rec. | 1 in 3.6M | 371 | Koza | 26 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 277△ | 1 rec. | 1 in 7.6K | 277 | — | 1 |
| AT Austria | — | 226 | 146 rec. | — | 6 | Koza | 29 |
Roughly 3.7K people in Poland bear this name (about 1 in 10K). 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●
- English6.1K34%
- Polish1.3K7%
- Hungarian1.3K7%
- Turkish1.2K7%
- Ukrainian1.1K6%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 6,122 | 34% |
| Polish | 1,306 | 7% |
| Hungarian | 1,268 | 7% |
| Turkish | 1,201 | 7% |
| Ukrainian | 1,101 | 6% |
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●
Kosa 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.
from a pet form of any of various personal names beginning with Ko, e.g. Komel (see Cornelius).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Polish, scythe
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Kala (N)
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
variant of Kos. Koscinski
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In lua, to cut off, chop off, saw off, shear off, sever, amputate, k. bitulia, to cut into pieces, k. cici, to close a trade by breaking a stick.
as a wordGrammar and Dictionary of the Buluba-Lulua Language
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 |
|---|---|
| 1999 | 13 |
| 2000 | 14 |
| 2001 | 14 |
| 2002 | 14 |
| 2003 | 14 |
| 2004 | 13 |
| 2005 | 13 |
| 2006 | 13 |
| 2007 | 12 |
| 2008 | 12 |
| 2009 | 12 |
| 2010 | 12 |
| 2011 | 12 |
| 2012 | 12 |
| 2013 | 12 |
| 2014 | 12 |
| 2015 | 12 |
| 2016 | 12 |
| 2017 | 11 |
| 2018 | 11 |
| 2019 | 11 |
| 2020 | 11 |
SE SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) — 22 years between 1999–2020. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Emil Kosa, Sr.b. 1876USAmerican artist
- Emil Kosa Jr.b. 1903USvisual effects artist (1903-1968)
- Michael Grassl-Kosab. 1962ATAustrian journalist
- Elfiallyiettez Kosab. 1988AUAustralian model
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 33 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 812 | #30,718 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 666 | #34,110 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 661 | #32,743 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 250 | #1,050 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 201 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 181 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 181 | #18,048 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 143 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 143 | #21,876 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 51 | #43,760 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 46 | #30,883 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 46 | #11,007 |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 2026-09-12 data build · 106 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Kosa?
- We estimate roughly 6.9 thousand people bear Kosa (counting its spellings and scripts) across 15 countries in our records.
- In which country does Kosa have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 3.7 thousand people bear Kosa in Poland, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled koza.
- How common is Kosa compared with other names?
- In Côte d’Ivoire, Kosa is the 587th most common surname of 19,557 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Kosa mean?
- Recorded meaning: from kosa ‘scythe’, a metonymic occupational name for a maker of scythes or a metonymic occupational name for a reaper.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kosaThe 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, “Kosa” — the 587th most common surname in Côte d’Ivoire. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.