사
surname · Hangul script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/sʰa̠/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
사 is a surname written in the Hangul script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In South Korea it is the 93rd most common surname.
- KRSouth Korea1 in 4.7K(measured from records)
- BRBrazil1 in 614as Sa
- ESSpain1 in 152Kas Sa
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than 사 itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- Sources
- 64 (measured from records)
- 1 in 4.7K (inferred from the name graph)
344,780 named Sa
Highest-authority source
South Korea
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Sá in US United States.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
사 counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | — | 344,780as Sa | 1 in 614 | 345K | — | — |
| KR South Korea | #93 | 10,998 | 1 in 4.7K | 12K | 사 | 64 |
| US United States | — | 1,600as Sa | 1 in 208K | 1.8K | Sá | 48 |
| ES Spain | — | 329as Sa | 1 in 152K | 329 | — | 1 |
| AR Argentina | — | 284as Sa | 1 in 160K | 284 | — | — |
| UY Uruguay | — | 18as Sa | 1 in 188K | 18 | — | — |
344,780 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants; KOSIS — 2015 census surnames; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 6 sources across 1 country.
Reference works 3
- KOSIS Korea 2015 census surnames + clans (bon'gwan)
- 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you pronounce 사?
- A machine transcription gives /sʰa̠/ (IPA) for Korean.
- In which country does 사 have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 345 thousand people named Sa, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is 사 most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, 사 is densest in South Korea — about 1 in 4.7 thousand people — even though Brazil holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name 사?
- In South Korea, the national register counted 10,998 people named 사 in 2015, about 1 in 4.7 thousand residents.
- How common is 사 compared with other names?
- In South Korea, 사 is the 93rd most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about 사?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%EC%82%ACThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
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, “사” — the 93rd most common surname in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.