Nii
given name · Akan · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Nii is a given name, most frequently recorded in Ghana. It appears chiefly in Akan and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: variously written, sometimes with characters used phonetically, the most probable meanings are ‘two wells’ or ‘new well’.
- GHGhana1 in 4.5K◐
- GBUnited Kingdom1 in 206K
- USUnited States1 in 1.3M
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈404 ●
- Sources
- 170 ●
- 1 in 175K ◐
across 7 countries
9.3K records
Official registry-verified
Iceland
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Nïî in DZ Algeria.
Meaning & origin●
variously written, sometimes with characters used phonetically, the most probable meanings are ‘two wells’ or ‘new well’. The name is not common in Japan.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GH Ghana | #116 | 3,775 | 2.4K rec. | — | 56K | Nii | 92 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 1,003 | 459 rec. | — | — | Nii | 78 |
| US United States | — | 251 | 4.7K rec. | 1 in 1.3M | 338 | Nii | 170 |
| DE Germany | — | 190 | 424 rec. | — | 1 | Nii | 39 |
| AU Australia | — | 135 | 204 rec. | — | 1 | Nii | 27 |
| MY Malaysia | — | 86 | 125 rec. | — | — | Nii | 22 |
| PH Philippines | — | 80 | 53 rec. | — | — | Nii | 10 |
| ZA South Africa | — | 72 | 76 rec. | — | — | Nii | 11 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 62 | 50 rec. | 1 in 279K | 62 | Nii | 13 |
| SE Sweden | — | 58△ | 5 rec. | 1 in 176K | 58 | — | 5 |
| CA Canada | — | 56 | 63 rec. | — | — | Nii | 22 |
| IT Italy | — | 55 | 71 rec. | — | — | Nii | 12 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Akan56K80%
- English9.1K13%
- Japanese8561%
- Swahili4601%
- Spanish4061%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Akan | 56,000 | 80% |
| English | 9,075 | 13% |
| Japanese | 856 | 1% |
| Swahili | 460 | 1% |
| Spanish | 406 | 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●
Nii 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 bpz, thin, fine, sheer, small; often a predicate of cloth
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In English, A Soviet scientific research institute.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In del, singular first-person pronoun: I
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, pronunciation spelling of niin
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In ff, and thus, and so, in this way
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 |
|---|---|
| 1978 | 7 |
| 1980 | 5 |
| 1982 | 7 |
| 1997 | 6 |
| 1999 | 8 |
| 2002 | 5 |
| 2005 | 8 |
| 2006 | 5 |
| 2014 | 6 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 9 years between 1978–2014. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- George Ayitteyb. 1945GHnot in their usual nameGhanaian economist and author (1945–2022)
- Nii Quaynorb. 1945USGhanaian scientist
- Nii Ayikwei Parkesb. 1974GBBritish writer
- Tinnyb. 1982GHnot in their usual nameGhanaian rapper
- Danny Welbeckb. 1990GBnot in their usual nameEnglish association football player (born 1990)
- Nii Osae Osae Dadeb. 1993GHGhanaian businessman (born 1993)
- Leslie Addob. 2006GHnot in their usual nameGhanaian badminton player
- Tetteh Nii AddyUSresearcher in particle physics
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 28 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GH Ghana | Heuristic parse of ghanacitizenship.com | 2026 | 56K | #92 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 338 | #63,720 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 288 | #68,345 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 251 | #31,866 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 240 | #74,957 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 62 | #5,866 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 58 | #12,449 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 42 | #9,660 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 26 | #164,002 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 20 | #29,716 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 18 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 16 | #31,866 |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 · 38 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Nii?
- We estimate roughly 404 people bear Nii (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
- In which country does Nii have the most bearers?
- Nii is most frequently recorded in Ghana, where it is most often spelled nii.
- How common is Nii compared with other names?
- In Ghana, Nii is the 116th most common given name of 14,190 given names recorded there.
- Is Nii a male or female name?
- Nii is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Nii mean?
- Recorded meaning: variously written, sometimes with characters used phonetically, the most probable meanings are ‘two wells’ or ‘new well’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/niiThe 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, “Nii” — the 116th most common given name in Ghana. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.