Mwa

surname · Latin script

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

Mwa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Switzerland than in any other country. Recorded meaning: [[Appendix:Swahili_noun_classes#Mu locative class|mu class_((XVIII))]] inflected form of -a.

rarermore common
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 1.7M(measured from records)

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Switzerland (measured from records)

5 people, 2024

Sources
22 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 1.7M (inferred from the name graph)

Switzerland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

[[Appendix:Swahili_noun_classes#Mu locative class|mu class_((XVIII))]] inflected form of -a

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world(measured from records)

Mwa 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.

Where Mwa is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CH Switzerland51 in 1.7M5——
US United States———Mwa22
MY Malaysia———Mwa2
NG Nigeria——listedMwa3
GB United Kingdom———Mwa9
ZA South Africa———Mwa5
AU Australia———Mwa2

5 people counted by BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames), 2024. 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: the african-book-names-hodari-2003 register; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Mwa is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Malaysia

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Mwà, Mwá, Mwä, Mwă

30 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(measured from records)

Mwa 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.

  • Beauty

    as a nameThe book of African names

  • Blessing, grace.

    as a nameThe African book of names

  • In mfe, me (first-person singular objective personal pronoun)

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

  • In Dutch, An expression of indifference: meh

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

  • In Shona, Karanga and Manyika form of -nwa

    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.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 3 sources across 3 countries.

Official registers attesting Mwa
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NG NigeriaThe African Book of Names (Hodari, 2003)———

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Mwa mean, and where does it come from?
[[Appendix:Swahili_noun_classes#Mu locative class|mu class_((XVIII))]] inflected form of -a Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Mwa have the most bearers?
In Switzerland, the national register counted about 5 people named Mwa, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Mwa most common?
Mwa is densest in Switzerland, where the national register counts about 1 in 1.7 million people carrying it.
How common is the name Mwa?
In Switzerland, the national register counted 5 people named Mwa in 2024, about 1 in 1.7 million residents.

What do you want to know about Mwa?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mwa

The same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Mwa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Mwa parses inside a full name →