Ouma
surname · Swahili · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Ouma is a surname, most frequently recorded in Kenya, where it is the 10th most common surname. It appears chiefly in Swahili and English, written in the Latin script.
- KEKenya1 in 155◐
- UGUganda1 in 468
- TNTunisia1 in 35K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈223 ●
- Sources
- 117 ●
- 1 in 232K ◐
across 7 countries
27K records
Official registry-verified
Finland
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested across 4 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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KE Kenya | #10 | 246,081 | 22K rec. | — | 2 | Ouma | 79 |
| UG Uganda | #23 | 993 | 49 rec. | — | 1 | Ouma | 24 |
| ZA South Africa | — | 323 | 2.3K rec. | — | — | Ouma | 36 |
| MA Morocco | — | 323 | 870 rec. | — | — | Ouma | 18 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | 244 | 84 rec. | — | — | Ouma | 13 |
| US United States | — | 143 | 999 rec. | 1 in 2.3M | 230 | Ouma | 117 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 121 | 56 rec. | — | — | Ouma | 32 |
| TN Tunisia | — | 97 | 190 rec. | — | — | Ouma | 8 |
| DZ Algeria | — | 47 | 65 rec. | — | listed | Ouma | 5 |
| FI Finland | — | 24△ | 2 rec. | 1 in 232K | 24 | — | 2 |
| SE Sweden | — | 17△ | 4 rec. | 1 in 600K | 17 | — | 9 |
| DK Denmark | — | 13 | — | 1 in 451K | 13 | — | — |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Swahili249K99%
- English1.1K1%
- French4611%
- Arabic3481%
- Russian2841%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Swahili | 249,126 | 99% |
| English | 1,069 | 1% |
| French | 461 | 1% |
| Arabic | 348 | 1% |
| Russian | 284 | 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●
Ouma 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 English, A grandmother.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Afrikaans, grandmother
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●
- Matthias Oumab. 1945UGUgandan boxer
- Ahmed Ogwell Oumab. 1969KEKenyan civil servant
- Vicent Ouma Odundob. 1978KEKenyan Roman Catholic bishop
- Morris Oumab. 1982KEKenyan cricketer
- Francis Oumab. 1988KEfootballer
- Timothy Oumab. 2004KEKenyan footballer
- Paul O OumaKEresearcher
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 19 sources across 14 countries.
Reference works 2
- 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 · 22 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Ouma?
- We estimate roughly 223 people bear Ouma (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
- In which country does Ouma have the most bearers?
- Ouma is most frequently recorded in Kenya, where it is most often spelled ouma.
- How common is Ouma compared with other names?
- In Kenya, Ouma is the 10th most common surname of 163,280 surnames recorded there.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/oumaThe 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, “Ouma” — the 10th most common surname in Kenya. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.