Nana

given name · Akan · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Nana is a given name, most frequently recorded in Ghana, where it is the 6th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Akan and Hindi, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Ghanaian: 'mother of the Earth'; also Krobo/Akan title 'chief or queen mother'.

rarermore common
  • GHGhana1 in 55◐
  • GEGeorgia1 in 95
  • EGEgypt1 in 2.2K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈52K ●

across 9 countries

5 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
110 ●

121K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 95 ◐

Georgia

Spellings & scripts●

NanaLatin · Akan●308K records
ᲜანაGeorgian · Georgian●122K records
나나Hangul · Korean●2K records
ΝαναGreek · Greek●66 records
ՆանաArmenian · Armenian●0 records

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled 나나 in KR South Korea.

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●

Ghanaian: 'mother of the Earth'; also Krobo/Akan title 'chief or queen mother'.

Sources 1

  • African Names

Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Nana is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GH Ghana#6309,642874 rec.——Nana46
GE Georgia#1642,03986K rec.1 in 9542KNana85
EG Egypt#30617,4784.9K rec.——Nana43
SY Syria#4858,06010K rec.——Nana8
US United States—5,393△2.6K rec.1 in 62K5.4KNana110
NG Nigeria—3,6373.5K rec.——Nana43
KR South Korea—2,5981.3K rec.——나나47
DK Denmark—1,678△1 rec.1 in 3.5K1.7K—1
IN India—1,5901.5K rec.—124Nana22
SA Saudi Arabia#8331,476424 rec.——Nana38
ZA South Africa—1,0921.5K rec.——Nana17
DZ Algeria#4579291.5K rec.——Nana12

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • Akan308K31%
  • Hindi200K20%
  • Georgian148K15%
  • English94K10%
  • Indonesian33K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Akan307,69231%
Hindi200,33220%
Georgian147,84715%
English93,82010%
Indonesian33,1883%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Nana is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi given name211K records spelled Nana15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Nigeria, Ghana

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Marathi

    Also written Naná, Nanà, Ñana, Nånå, Ñaña

  • English given name136K records spelled Nana84 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Ghana, United Kingdom, Nigeria

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Nanae, Naena, Na--Na, Ñaña, Na-Na

  • French given name65K records spelled Nana48 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Brazil, United States, Colombia

    Languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Ñaña, Naná, Nanà, Nänä, Naña

  • Indonesian given name50K records spelled Nana16 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, India, Malaysia, United States

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written 'Nana, Nana', Ñaña, Nanà, Ñana

  • Japanese given name36K records spelled Nana16 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Japan, United States, Ghana, India

    Also written Nanà, Naná, Na-Na, Ñaña, Nänä

  • a separate given name19K records spelled Nana14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Ghana, China

    Also written Na-Na, Nanà, Nanâ, Ñāṇa, Ñānā

  • Chinese given name10K records spelled Nana2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Ghana, Taiwan

    Also written Na-Na

80 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Nana 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.

  • In English, A banana.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Mother of the earth

    as a nameThe book of African names

  • In French, On sait que nana est devenu un nom commun pour désigner argotiquement la femme, voire la prostituée. Le mot dérive du prénom Anna et fut popularisé par le roman de Zola.

    as a name2500 noms propres devenus communs : dictionnaire étymologique (éponymes, antonomases et hypallages)

  • In French, Hypocoristique moderne; origine multiple selon les langues.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • Jovencita

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

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●

020406019001950200047 · 2000

Show as table
Nana in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1881–2025
Yearrecords
18819
18835
18846
18855
18866
18888
188910
18907
18917
18927
18939
189410
189511
18969
18975
189813
18997
19007
19015
19028
19038
19047
19056
19077
19095
19109
19118
191214
191313
19149
191520
191628
191722
191827
191924
192014
192135
192218
192325
192426
192514
192622
192716
192818
192917
193017
193115
193216
193310
193420
193527
193616
193720
193818
193923
194019
194117
194216
194325
194423
19459
194615
194720
194829
194929
195020
195122
195217
195319
195411
195517
195623
195716
195817
195910
196013
196116
196211
19636
196415
19657
196611
19679
19688
196912
197010
197116
197223
197311
197420
197516
197616
197725
197817
197916
198017
198116
198211
198314
198418
198513
198625
198717
198824
198937
199028
199118
199224
199326
199431
199529
199621
199733
199825
199934
200047
200139
200236
200331
200441
200526
200639
200733
200831
200926
201027
201128
201219
201322
201432
201525
201627
201725
201827
201925
202026
202116
202218
202322
202414
202516

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 141 years between 1881–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

18001850190019502000Nana Sahib, b. 1824Nana Mouskouri, b. 1934Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, b. 1944Nana Patekar, b. 1951Nana Visitor, b. 1957Nana Smith, b. 1971Nana Mizuki, b. 1980Nana Natsume, b. 1980Nanna Blondell, b. 1986Nana Dzagnidze, b. 1987

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 110 sources across 55 countries.

Official registers attesting Nana
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20205.4K#2,931
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20202.3K#2,931
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—1.7K#277
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020770#32,101
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—659#12,068
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—595#2,001
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022539—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—515#12,688
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—506#654
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)2026506#654
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—488—
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—461#4,839

Reference works 8

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Lietuvių kalbos institutas — Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Lithuanian surname dictionary)
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • 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 · 723 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Nana?
We estimate roughly 52 thousand people bear Nana (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Nana have the most bearers?
Nana is most frequently recorded in Ghana, where it is most often spelled nana.
How common is Nana compared with other names?
In Ghana, Nana is the 6th most common given name of 14,190 given names recorded there.
Is Nana a male or female name?
Nana is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
What does the name Nana mean?
Recorded meaning: Ghanaian: 'mother of the Earth'; also Krobo/Akan title 'chief or queen mother'.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/nana

The 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

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

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, “Nana” — the 6th most common given name in Ghana. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Nana parses inside a full name →