Ngao
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Swahili: shield
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Ngao is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country.
- KEKenya≈1 in 10K(inferred from the name graph)
- TZTanzania≈1 in 7.6K
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 74K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 42 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈7,700 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Tanzania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
to meow
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
How Ngao is read(measured from records)
Ngao is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Swahili76%
shield
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English9.6%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Ngao in English.
- Vietnamese5.7%
to meow
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ngao 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TZ Tanzania | #729 | ≈7,700 est. | ≈1 in 7.6K | — | Ngao | 19 |
| KE Kenya | #878 | ≈5,200 est. | ≈1 in 10K | listed | Ngao | 30 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 446K | — | Ngao | 6 |
| HK Hong Kong | — | ≈98 est. | ≈1 in 74K | — | Ngao | 5 |
| US United States | — | ≈70 est. | ≈1 in 4.8M | listed | Ngao | 42 |
| CF Central African Republic | — | ≈61 est. | ≈1 in 99K | 1 | — | — |
| IN India | — | 5 | 1 in 265M | 5 | — | 3 |
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 masakhane register; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; ANE — Liste provisoire des candidats (legislatives & regionales 2025). 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)
Ngao is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In rap, neck
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 10 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| KE Kenya | MasakhaNER 2.0 — Zimbabwe (sna) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- Wikipedia surname tokens
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
- Where does the name Ngao come from?
- to meow Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What does the name Ngao mean?
- In Swahili, shield
- In which country does Ngao have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 7.7 thousand people named Ngao in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ngao.
- How common is the name Ngao?
- In India, the national register counted 5 people named Ngao, about 1 in 265 million residents.
- How common is Ngao compared with other names?
- In Tanzania, Ngao is the 729th most common surname of 112,969 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ngao?
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/ngaoThe 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, “Ngao” — the 729th most common surname in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.