Niwa
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Japanese: variously written, sometimes willi characters used phonetically, the most probable meanings are ‘two wings’ or ‘garden’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɲɪwə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Niwa is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in Japan.
- JPJapan
- USUnited States
- CACanada
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
variously written, sometimes willi characters used phonetically, the most probable meanings are ‘two wings’ or ‘garden’. Two noble families, one descended from the Minamoto and the other from the Fujiwara, both originated in Owari (now part of Aichi prefecture). The name is not common in Japan and is found mostly along the southeastern seaboard.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Niwa is read(measured from records)
Niwa 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.
- Japanese64%
variously written, sometimes willi characters used phonetically, the most probable meanings are ‘two wings’ or ‘garden’. Two noble families, one descended from the Minamoto and the other from the Fujiwara, both originated in Owari (now part of Aichi prefecture). The name is not common in Japan and is found mostly along the southeastern seaboard.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Rōmaji transcription of にわ
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English21%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Niwa in English.
- Polish13%
cultivated field, cornfield (field of corn, wheat, or other cereal crop)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Recorded in:
- JPJapan
- USUnited States
- BRBrazil
- DEGermany
- CACanada
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Niwa 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 Akan, [oni, mother, ba, child] ^=^ nua, brother dx. n 1 w a-m m a [oni, dim.'] relatives onihe nwtliet^s side; nua mroa, brother's children
as a wordDictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi)
In ang, neophyte
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(measured from records)
- Niwa Nagahideb. 1535JPdaimyo (1535-1585)
- Shichirō Niwab. 1885JPJapanese politician (1885-1935)
- Hyōsuke Niwab. 1911JPJapanese politician (1911-1990)
- Kyūshō Niwab. 1914JPJapanese politician (1914-1985)
- Motoji Niwab. 1919JPJapanese folklorist
- Yuya Niwab. 1944JPJapanese politician
- Hideki Niwab. 1972JPJapanese politician
- Daiki Niwab. 1986JPJapanese association football player
- Mikiho Niwab. 1989JPJapanese actress and singer
- Koki Niwab. 1994JPJapanese table tennis 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 19 sources across 10 countries.
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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 Niwa mean, and where does it come from?
- variously written, sometimes willi characters used phonetically, the most probable meanings are ‘two wings’ or ‘garden’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Niwa?
- A machine transcription gives /ɲɪwə/ (IPA) for Japanese.
- In which country does Niwa have the most bearers?
- Niwa is most frequently recorded in Japan.
What do you want to know about Niwa?
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/niwaThe 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, “Niwa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.