Mussa
surname · Swahili · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Mussa is a surname, most frequently recorded in Nigeria, where it is the 19th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Swahili and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Moses; Qur'anic prophet.
- TZTanzania1 in 242◐
- NGNigeria1 in 368
- SYSyria1 in 1.9K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈30K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 254 ●
- 1 in 2.2K ◐
across 7 countries
recorded for this name
541K records
Official registry-verified
North Macedonia
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Mousa in EG Egypt, US United States, FR France and 8 more, Musa in NG Nigeria, TR Türkiye, KE Kenya and 7 more and Муса in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan, KG Kyrgyzstan and 3 more.
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●
Moses; Qur'anic prophet
Sources 1
- African Muslim Names
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #19 | 197,836 | 260K rec. | — | — | Musa | 100 |
| RU Russia | #394 | 70,497 | 65K rec. | — | #164 | Муса | 132 |
| TZ Tanzania | #68 | 39,198 | 27K rec. | — | 17 | Mussa | 52 |
| EG Egypt | — | 18,969 | 6.8K rec. | — | listed | Mousa | 118 |
| TR Türkiye | — | 16,718 | 23K rec. | — | — | Musa | 44 |
| KE Kenya | #306 | 13,415 | 5.2K rec. | — | — | Musa | 49 |
| FR France | — | 12,345△ | 2.1K rec. | 1 in 5.5K | 12K | Mousa | 96 |
| SY Syria | — | 11,504 | 19K rec. | — | — | Mousa | 29 |
| ZA South Africa | #581 | 6,645 | 8K rec. | — | — | Musa | 66 |
| MY Malaysia | #833 | 5,965 | 17K rec. | — | — | Musa | 64 |
| ES Spain | — | 5,954△ | 1.1K rec. | 1 in 8.4K | 6K | Mousa | 36 |
| US United States | — | 4,847 | 30K rec. | 1 in 69K | 5.2K | Mousa | 254 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Swahili28K42%
- English12K17%
- Spanish5.7K8%
- Arabic4.7K7%
- Portuguese3.6K5%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Swahili | 28,436 | 42% |
| English | 11,592 | 17% |
| Spanish | 5,694 | 8% |
| Arabic | 4,729 | 7% |
| Portuguese | 3,641 | 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●
Mussa 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.
variant of Musa (Moses).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Latin, second-person singular present active imperative of mussō
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, third-person singular past historic of musser
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, inessive singular of minä
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In vec, sleigh for straw
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 |
|---|---|
| 1999 | 11 |
| 2000 | 11 |
| 2001 | 12 |
| 2002 | 12 |
| 2003 | 12 |
| 2004 | 14 |
| 2005 | 14 |
| 2006 | 16 |
| 2007 | 18 |
| 2008 | 18 |
| 2009 | 18 |
| 2010 | 19 |
| 2011 | 21 |
| 2012 | 24 |
| 2013 | 32 |
| 2014 | 37 |
| 2015 | 49 |
| 2016 | 56 |
| 2017 | 64 |
| 2018 | 66 |
| 2019 | 67 |
| 2020 | 70 |
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●
- Enrico Mussab. 1865ITItalian botanist and librarian (1865-1942)
- Moisés Mussab. 1900CLChilean academic and writer
- Italo Mussab. 1939ITItalian art critic
- Michael Mussab. 1944USAmerican economist
- Alberto Mussab. 1961BRBrazilian writer
- Raptileb. 1976DEnot in their usual nameGerman singer and rapper
- Omar Mussab. 1980BIBurundian footballer
- Faustine Mussab. 1981TZTanzanian distance runner
- Henry MussaMWMalawian politician
- Luigi MussaITItalian missionary
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 63 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1K | #25,766 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 616 | #14,120 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 553 | #39,717 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 457 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 421 | #47,389 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 319 | #27,915 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 286 | #3,096 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 224 | #7,023 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 184 | #9,611 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 162 | #4,960 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 100 | #7,732 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 92 | #11,837 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 · 216 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Mussa?
- We estimate roughly 30 thousand people bear Mussa (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
- In which country does Mussa have the most bearers?
- Mussa is most frequently recorded in Nigeria, where it is most often spelled musa.
- How common is Mussa compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Mussa is the 19th most common given name of 146,224 given names recorded there.
- What does the name Mussa mean?
- Recorded meaning: Moses; Qur'anic prophet
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mussaThe 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, “Mussa” — the 19th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.