Rapa

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: The East Central Polynesian language of Rapa Iti, an island of French Polynesia

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

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

Rapa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Congo - Kinshasa than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • PLPoland1 in 50K(measured from records)
  • FIFinland1 in 54K
  • MTMalta≈1 in 56K

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.

Congo - Kinshasa (inferred from the name graph)

≈1,500 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
130 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 50K (inferred from the name graph)

Poland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

RapaLatin(measured from records)
ระภาThai(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)

grower or seller of turnips, from It. rapa turnip (LL rapa (fern.), originally the pi. form of class. L rapum (neut.)). 2. derogatory nickname for a stupid person, from the same word in a transferred sense. Vars.: Rapi; Rava, Ravi (N Italy). It.: Rapetti, Rapetto, Rapini, Rapino, Rapucci, Rappuzzi; Ravetta, Ravetti, Ravina, Ravella, Ravelli. Dims.:

Sources 1

  • The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Rapa is read(measured from records)

Rapa is one spelling over 4 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.

  • Hindi31%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Rapa in Hindi.

  • English29%

    The East Central Polynesian language of Rapa Iti, an island of French Polynesia.

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

  • Polish12%

    asp (Aspius aspius, syn. Leuciscus aspius)

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

  • Spanish7.3%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Rapa in Spanish.

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)

Rapa 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 Rapa is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CD Congo - Kinshasa—≈1,500 est.≈1 in 68K—Rapa1
ID Indonesia—≈840 est.≈1 in 318K—Rapa47
PL Poland—7651 in 50K396—1
IT Italy—≈490 est.≈1 in 127KlistedRapa14
PH Philippines—≈460 est.≈1 in 236K—Rapa13
FI Finland—1031 in 54K103—3
MT Malta#675≈8 est.≈1 in 56K—Rapa22

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); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)

Rapa is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Ukrainian surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ukraine, Poland, Russia, United States

    Languages: Ukrainian, Polish, Russian

    Also written Рапа

  • Portuguese surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, Brazil, United States, India

    Also written Râpă, Râpa

  • a separate name7 spellings in the group

    Also written రపీ, Rapi, Raapa, Rapo, Repa

41 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)

Rapa is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Italian, grower or seller of turnips, from It. rapa turnip (LL rapa (fern.), originally the pi. form of class. L rapum (neut.)). 2. derogatory nickname for a stupid person, from the same word in a transferred sense. Vars.: Rapi; Rava, Ravi (N Italy). It.: Rapetti, Rapetto, Rapini, Rapino, Rapucci, Rappuzzi; Ravetta, Ravetti, Ravina, Ravella, Ravelli. Dims.:

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • In Italian, do lat. rapa, nabo/rabanete; produtor ou vendedor; também pessoa rude ou calva

    as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

  • In Hungarian, engraving, writing

    as a wordEtymological Dictionary of Hungarian

  • In Hungarian, engraver, writer

    as a wordEtymological Dictionary of Hungarian

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)

192019401960198020002020Stanisław Rapa, b. 1938Adam Rapa, b. 1980Valentina Rapa, b. 2002

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)

Formalआदरणीय श्री Rapa जी,Respected Rapa ji, (English)
Informalनमस्ते Rapa जी,Hi Rapa, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 34 sources across 20 countries.

Reference works 4

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 Rapa come from?
grower or seller of turnips, from It. rapa turnip (LL rapa (fern.), originally the pi. form of class. L rapum (neut.)). 2. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
How do you pronounce Rapa?
A machine transcription gives /ɹapə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
What does the name Rapa mean?
In English, The East Central Polynesian language of Rapa Iti, an island of French Polynesia.
In which country does Rapa have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 1.5 thousand people named Rapa in Congo - Kinshasa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rapa.
Where is Rapa most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Rapa is densest in Poland — about 1 in 50 thousand people — even though Congo - Kinshasa holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Rapa?
In Poland, the national register counted 765 people named Rapa in 2026, about 1 in 50 thousand residents.
How common is Rapa compared with other names?
In Malta, Rapa is the 675th most common surname of 5,132 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Rapa?

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

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, “Rapa” — the 675th most common surname in Malta. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Rapa parses inside a full name →