Zappa

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Italian: an agricultural implement, such as a hoe

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

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

Zappa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • ARArgentina1 in 71K(measured from records)
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 39K
  • USUnited States1 in 302K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

1,100 people, 2010

Sources
64 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 39K (inferred from the name graph)

Switzerland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

an agricultural implement, such as a hoe

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.

How Zappa is read(measured from records)

Zappa 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.

  • English54%

    ‘Agricultural labourer’, from Italian zappa ‘mattock’.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

  • Spanish21%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Zappa in Spanish.

  • Italian6.8%

    an agricultural implement, such as a hoe

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

    cultural worker, from It. zappa mattock. Var.: Zappi. Dims.: Zappell(in)i, Zappetta, Zappett(in)i, Zappini, Zappino; Zapp(ar)oli (Emilia); Zapulla, Zappulli (Sicily).

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

    do lat. med. sappa, enxada; refere-se a fabricante/vendedor de enxadas ou agricultor

    as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Zappa 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 Zappa is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States1,1001 in 302K1.2KZappa48
AR Argentina6441 in 71K644Zappa47
BR Brazil3721 in 569K372Zappa64
CH Switzerland2171 in 39K217Zappa10
ES Spain281 in 1.8M28Zappa12

1,100 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal). 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)

Zappa is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Canada, Italy

    Also written Zǎppa

  • Greek surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece

    Also written Ζαππα, Ζάππα

39 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)

Zappa 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 Swedish, to zap, to change the channel on a TV set repeatedly by remote control

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

  • In French, third-person singular past historic of zapper

    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)

1700180019002000Francesco Zappa, b. 1717Frank Zappa, b. 1940Gail Zappa, b. 1945Gianpietro Zappa, b. 1956Moon Zappa, b. 1967Dweezil Zappa, b. 1969Gō Zappa, b. 1970Ahmet Zappa, b. 1974Diva Zappa, b. 1979Gabriele Zappa, b. 1999

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)

FormalDear Zappa,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 26 sources across 16 countries.

Official registers attesting Zappa
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.2K#21,004
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.1K#23,402
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.1K#23,185
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—644—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—372#22,083
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)2024217#5,832
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—28#66,515
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—28#65,950
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

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 Zappa mean, and where does it come from?
an agricultural implement, such as a hoe Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Zappa?
A machine transcription gives /zæpə/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Zappa have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 1.1 thousand people named Zappa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zappa.
Where is Zappa most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Zappa is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 39 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Zappa?
In the United States, the national register counted 1,100 people named Zappa in 2010, about 1 in 302 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Zappa?

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

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, “Zappa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Zappa parses inside a full name →