Riga
loc · Latin script
Meaning: city, Latvia; gulf, Baltic Sea
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Riga is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- USUnited States
- LVLatvia
- ATAustria
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 164 (measured from records)
no count published
Highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
city, Latvia; gulf, Baltic Sea
Sources 1
- Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Riga counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 547 | Riga | 164 |
| LV Latvia | — | 1 | Riga | 1 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 38 | Riga | 45 |
| AT Austria | — | 8 | Riga | 4 |
| RU Russia | — | — | Riga | 4 |
| BE Belgium | — | 759 | — | 24 |
| AR Argentina | — | 408 | — | 1 |
| BR Brazil | — | 240 | — | 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024). 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)
Riga 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.
In Serbo-Croatian, commercial name for arugula, rocket (Eruca sativa, a grassy plant used for salad)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, second-person singular present active imperative of rigō
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In sga, third-person singular future conjunct of téit
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Maltese, ruler (measuring or drawing device)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In non, to lift heavily or with difficulty
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)
- Peter Rigab. 1140FRFrench poet
- Antonín Rigab. 1660CZCzech sculptor
- Bernardo Javier González Rigab. 1901ARArgentinian Paleontologist
- Graziella Rigab. 1941ITItalian politician (1941–2012)
- José Rigab. 1957BEBelgian football manager (born 1957)
- Odile Rigab. 1968FRFrench politician
- Sergio Zárateb. 1969ARnot in their usual nameArgentine footballer
- Ariel Zárateb. 1973ARnot in their usual nameArgentine footballer
- Rolando Zárateb. 1978ARnot in their usual nameArgentine footballer
- Riga Mustaphab. 1981NLDutch-Ghanaian footballer (born 1981)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 40 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 759 | #1,852 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 669 | #2,156 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 547 | #40,082 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 507 | #45,457 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 505 | #40,761 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 408 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 240 | #31,666 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 38 | #60,264 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- 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 Riga mean, and where does it come from?
- city, Latvia; gulf, Baltic Sea Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
- In which country does Riga have the most bearers?
- Riga is most frequently recorded in the United States, where it is most often spelled riga.
What do you want to know about Riga?
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/rigaThe 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, “Riga”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.