Lefa
given name · Latin script
Meaning: to pay
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 5 countries · latest register: Guyana, 2025
/lefa/(machine-generated) Swahili · model-generated
Lefa is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 7.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- GYGuyana1 in 750K
- USUnited States≈1 in 4.5Mfew records
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)
- Record sources
- 39 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈7,100 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
South Africa, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)to pay
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world
(measured from records)Lefa 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈7,100 est. | ≈1 in 7.9K | — | Lefa | 31 |
| US United States | — | ≈74 est. | ≈1 in 4.5M | 6 | Lefa | 39 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈30 est. | ≈1 in 7M | — | Lefa | 6 |
| FR France | — | ≈17 est. | ≈1 in 4M | — | Lefa | 17 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈8 est. | ≈1 in 8.3M | — | Lefa | 16 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 3.7M | — | Lefa | 16 |
| LS Lesotho | #193 | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 1.1M | 1 | Lefa | 3 |
| GY Guyana | — | 1 | 1 in 750K | 1 | — | 1 |
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: SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present); Lesotho IEC 2022 National Assembly candidate lists; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)Lefa is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Malagasy, one who escapes or flees
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Malagasy, gone, run away
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Spanish, semen, cumshot
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.
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)5 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1923 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1917 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1916 | 5 | — |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 1 | #593 |
| LS Lesotho | Lesotho IEC 2022 National Assembly candidate lists | 2022 | 1 | #20 |
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Lefa mean, and where does it come from?
- to pay Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Lefa?
- In Swahili /lefa/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Is Lefa a male or female name?
- Lefa is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Lefa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 7.1 thousand people named Lefa in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lefa.
- How common is the name Lefa?
- In Guyana, the national register counted 1 people named Lefa in 2025, about 1 in 750 thousand residents.
- How common is Lefa compared with other names?
- In Lesotho, Lefa is the 193rd most common given name of 1,237 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lefa?
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/lefaThe 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, “Lefa” — the 193rd most common given name in Lesotho. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.