Dada
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Swahili/Yoruba: sister; a female name for a child with curly hair; also a West African nature deity
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈdɑˌdɑ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Dada is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 3.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 53K
- DKDenmark1 in 457as Nanna
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Dada itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 89 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈55,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nigeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Nanne in SE Sweden, FI Finland, Dadi in TZ Tanzania and Dad in AF Afghanistan.
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)
Swahili/Yoruba: sister; a female name for a child with curly hair; also a West African nature deity.
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Dada 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | ≈55,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | listed | Dada | 38 |
| DK Denmark | 12,831as Nanna | 1 in 457 | 13K | — | 1 |
| TZ Tanzania | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 16K | 8 | Dadi | 11 |
| AF Afghanistan | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Dad | 20 |
| BD Bangladesh | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 53K | — | Dada | 14 |
| SE Sweden | 2,553as Nanna | 1 in 4K | 2.6K | Nanne | 5 |
| FI Finland | 1,125as Nanna | 1 in 5K | 1.4K | Nanne | 7 |
| IS Iceland | 274as Nanna | 1 in 1.3K | 296 | — | — |
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: Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); 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); INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry); Hagstofa Íslands — Given-name frequency by population (2005). 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)
Dada is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
variant of Daddow . 2 Iranian, Muslim: from a personal name based on Persian dāda ‘given’ (i.e. ‘gift of God’). 3 Muslim, Indian: Hindu and Muslim, meaning ‘elder brother’ in Bengali, Sindhi, Marathi, and other Indian languages, and ‘(paternal) grandfather’ in Hindi and Urdu; also used as an honorific.
as a nameThe Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
In English, Father, dad.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Child with curly hair
as a nameThe book of African names
A child with curly hair
as a nameThe book of African names
In English, artistic movement
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- Dada Masilob. 1985ZASouth African dancer and choreographer (1985–2024)
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 57 sources across 29 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 53 | #12,015 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 31 | #33,682 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 10 | #40,187 |
Reference works 8
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Dada mean, and where does it come from?
- Swahili/Yoruba: sister; a female name for a child with curly hair; also a West African nature deity. Recorded by African Names.
- How do you pronounce Dada?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈdɑˌdɑ/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Dada a male or female name?
- Dada 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 Dada have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 55 thousand people named Dada in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dada.
- How common is the name Dada?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 12,831 people named Nanna, about 1 in 457 residents.
What do you want to know about Dada?
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/dadaThe 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, “Dada”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.