Chima
given name · Latin script
Meaning: God has the answer
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/tʃimə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Chima is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 537K(measured from records)
- NGNigeria≈1 in 32M
- SESweden1 in 243K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 185 (measured from records)
- 1 in 243K (inferred from the name graph)
619 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
God has the answer.
Sources 1
- The African book of names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Chima 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 619 | 1 in 537K | 775 | Chima | 185 |
| SE Sweden | — | 42 | 1 in 243K | 42 | — | 12 |
| ES Spain | — | 21 | 1 in 2.4M | 65 | — | 19 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 16 | 1 in 1.1M | 16 | Chima | 12 |
| PL Poland | — | 14 | 1 in 2.7M | 14 | — | 1 |
| NG Nigeria | #559 | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 32M | listed | Chima | 103 |
| FI Finland | — | 7 | 1 in 796K | 35 | — | 3 |
| GY Guyana | — | 1 | 1 in 750K | 1 | — | 1 |
| IS Iceland | — | 1 | 1 in 351K | 1 | — | — |
619 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Chima 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 chl, A tree branch.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Portuguese, nshima
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In dag, 2. to roast groundnuts, large beetle
as a wordDagbani Dictionary CD
In dag, a tall grass
as a wordDagbani Dictionary CD
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)
- Chima Williamsb. 1978NGNigerian climate activist
- Chima Simoneb. 1982USAmerican television personality
- Chima Nwosub. 1986NGNigerian footballer
- Chima Rokb. 1989USAmerican actor
- Chima Edeb. 1992German rapper
- Chima Monekeb. 1995NGNigerian basketball player (born 1995)
- Rameezb. 2000GBnot in their usual nameBritish rapper
- Joel Chima Fujitab. 2002JPJapanese association football player
- Rio Ngumohab. 2008GBnot in their usual nameEnglish association football player (born 2008)
- Chima Joseph UgoNGNigerian journalist and founder of Prime 9ja Online
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 49 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 775 | #31,939 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 590 | #37,691 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 394 | #49,965 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 65 | #37,067 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 65 | #36,957 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 11 | #43,940 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 11 | #38,348 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 7 | #70,173 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
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 Chima mean, and where does it come from?
- God has the answer. Recorded by The African book of names.
- How do you pronounce Chima?
- A machine transcription gives /tʃimə/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Chima a male or female name?
- Chima is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Chima have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 619 people named Chima, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chima.
- Where is Chima most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Chima is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 243 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Chima?
- In the United States, the national register counted 619 people named Chima in 2020, about 1 in 537 thousand residents.
- How common is Chima compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Chima is the 559th most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Chima?
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/chimaThe 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, “Chima” — the 559th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.