Nyathi

surname · Latin script

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

/ɲaθi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Nyathi is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country. In Botswana it is the 66th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 2.2K(inferred from the name graph)
  • ZWZimbabwe≈1 in 843
  • BWBotswana≈1 in 2.2K

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.

South Africa (inferred from the name graph)

≈25,000 people, est.

Sources
72 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 843 (inferred from the name graph)

Zimbabwe, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin

No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Nyathi 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 Nyathi is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ZA South Africa#189≈25,000 est.≈1 in 2.2K—Nyathi63
ZW Zimbabwe#364≈17,000 est.≈1 in 843listedNyathi35
BW Botswana#66≈1,000 est.≈1 in 2.2KlistedNyathi7
ZM Zambia—≈260 est.≈1 in 66K—Nyathi5
NA Namibia#830≈230 est.≈1 in 11K—Nyathi3
PL Poland—311 in 1.2M18——

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: dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (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 recorded senses(measured from records)

Nyathi 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 nr, Means "buffalo"; totemic clan name.

    as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames

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.

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalDear Mr Nyathi,
InformalHi Nyathi,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 5 sources across 5 countries.

Official registers attesting Nyathi
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)202618—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—18#96,110
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)202613—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—13#116,951

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

Frequently asked questions

How do you pronounce Nyathi?
A machine transcription gives /ɲaθi/ (IPA) for Swahili.
In which country does Nyathi have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 25 thousand people named Nyathi in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nyathi.
How common is the name Nyathi?
In Poland, the national register counted 31 people named Nyathi in 2026, about 1 in 1.2 million residents.
How common is Nyathi compared with other names?
In South Africa, Nyathi is the 189th most common surname of 285,788 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Nyathi?

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

The 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, “Nyathi” — the 189th most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Nyathi parses inside a full name →