Nana
given name · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Nana is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Ghana than in any other country. In Georgia it is the 35th most common given name. Recorded meaning: Ghanaian: 'mother of the Earth'; also Krobo/Akan title 'chief or queen mother'.
- GHGhana≈1 in 209(inferred from the name graph)
- SYSyria≈1 in 2.4K
- EGEgypt≈1 in 3.8K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Nana 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.
- Ghana (inferred from the name graph)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 111 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 209 (inferred from the name graph)
≈140,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ghana, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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(measured from records)
Ghanaian: 'mother of the Earth'; also Krobo/Akan title 'chief or queen mother'.
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nana 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GH Ghana | #118 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 209 | — | Nana | 41 |
| GE Georgia | #35 | 42,039as ნანა | 1 in 95 | 42K | Nana | 88 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈39,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | — | Nana | 43 |
| EG Egypt | #273 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.8K | — | Nana | 46 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.8K | — | Nana | 17 |
| SY Syria | #336 | ≈8,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Nana | 9 |
| US United States | — | 7,719 | 1 in 43K | 5.4K | Nana | 111 |
| DK Denmark | — | 1,703 | 1 in 3.4K | 1.7K | — | — |
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: Georgia PSDA/SDA civil-registry name statistics (per-token API); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Nana Sahibb. 1824INIndian rebel (1824–1859)
- Nana Mouskourib. 1934GRGreek singer (born 1934)
- Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addob. 1944GHPresident of Ghana from 2017 to 2025
- Nana Patekarb. 1951INIndian philanthropist, writer, flim actor and film maker (born 1951)
- Nana Visitorb. 1957USAmerican actress (born 1957)
- Nana Smithb. 1971JPJapanese tennis player
- Nana Mizukib. 1980JPJapanese singer, voice actress and narrator (born 1980)
- Nana Natsumeb. 1980JPJapanese pornographic actress
- Nanna Blondellb. 1986SEnot in their usual nameSwedish actress
- Nana Dzagnidzeb. 1987GEGeorgian chess player
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(measured from records)
Attested in 112 sources across 55 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 5.4K | #2,931 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.3K | #2,931 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 1.7K | #277 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 25 | #3,747 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 16 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 16 | — |
Reference works 9
- 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
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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
- What does the name Nana mean, and where does it come from?
- Ghanaian: 'mother of the Earth'; also Krobo/Akan title 'chief or queen mother'. Recorded by African Names.
- How common is the name Nana?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,719 people named Nana in 2020, about 1 in 43 thousand residents.
- How common is Nana compared with other names?
- In Ghana, Nana is the 118th most common given name of 14,081 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.
- In which country does Nana have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 140 thousand people named Nana in Ghana, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nana.
What do you want to know about Nana?
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/nanaThe 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, “Nana” — the 118th most common given name in Ghana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.