Soa
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Initialism of Sarbanes-Oxley Act, officially titled the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/səə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Soa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country.
- TZTanzania≈1 in 40K(inferred from the name graph)
- EEEstonia≈1 in 70K
- RERéunion≈1 in 250K
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.
- Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 86 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 40K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,500 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Tanzania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Initialism of Sarbanes-Oxley Act, officially titled the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Soa 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TZ Tanzania | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 40K | 1 | Soa | 8 |
| BR Brazil | 790 | 1 in 268K | 790 | — | 2 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 2M | — | Soa | 10 |
| US United States | ≈81 est. | ≈1 in 4.1M | 85 | Soa | 86 |
| AR Argentina | 42 | 1 in 1.1M | 42 | — | — |
| EE Estonia | ≈18 est. | ≈1 in 70K | 33 | — | 3 |
| UY Uruguay | ≈13 est. | ≈1 in 269K | 1 | — | — |
| RE Réunion | ≈3 est. | ≈1 in 250K | 5 | — | — |
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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion); Montevideo Open Data — Nombres por año y sexo (1940–2012); the ee-stat-nimed register. 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)
Soa 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 Akan, V. [red. soasSa] s. mn, to hook in, to fasten ioith a hook, to hitch, become entangled or caught, catch or fasten as by a hook; syn. toa mu
as a wordDictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi)
In kr, comp. kd-nm. kddamma (Tor: kddamu-a) , a. having or containing a fountain
as a wordKanuri-English Vocabulary (in African Native Literature)
In Dutch, acronym of seksueel overdraagbare aandoening (“STD, sexually transmitted disease”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Samoan, have a friend or partner; a friend, partner, second; pair of friends, partners (especially in dancing)
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Samoan, an ambassador from a boy to the object of his affections
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)
- Sha Menghaib. 1900CNnot in their usual nameChinese artist (1900–1992)
- Sha Wenhanb. 1908CNnot in their usual nameChinese politician and University president
- Sha Yexinb. 1939CNnot in their usual nameChinese writer (1939-2018)
- Sha Zukangb. 1947CNnot in their usual nameChinese diplomat
- Sha Baoliangb. 1972CNnot in their usual nameChinese singer
- Sha Yib. 1978CNnot in their usual nameChinese actor
- Sha Yibob. 1991CNnot in their usual nameChinese Footballer
- Sha Xingyub. 1994CNnot in their usual nameChinese Go player
- Sha Tzu-chenb. 2003TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese baseball player
- Sha ShaCAnot in their usual nameCanadian Go player
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 23 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 790 | #11,387 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 42 | — |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 33 | #3,160 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 23 | #4,877 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Soa mean, and where does it come from?
- Initialism of Sarbanes-Oxley Act, officially titled the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Soa?
- A machine transcription gives /səə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- In which country does Soa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.5 thousand people named Soa in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled soa.
- How common is the name Soa?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 790 people named Soa, about 1 in 268 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Soa?
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/soaThe 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, “Soa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.