Yah

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: Yes

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/ʝa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Yah is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Côte d’Ivoire than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • CICôte d’Ivoire≈1 in 7.1K(inferred from the name graph)
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 14K
  • PHPhilippines≈1 in 595K

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.

Côte d’Ivoire (inferred from the name graph)

≈3,900 people, est.

Sources
64 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 7.1K (inferred from the name graph)

Côte d’Ivoire, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Yes.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

How Yah is read(measured from records)

Yah is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • Spanish54%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Yah in Spanish.

  • French (Côte d’Ivoire)19%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Yah in French (Côte d’Ivoire).

  • English11%

    Yes.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Malay5.7%

    father (male parent)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Yah 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.

Where Yah is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CI Côte d’Ivoire≈3,900 est.≈1 in 7.1K1.8K——
MY Malaysia≈2,400 est.≈1 in 14K—Yah10
US United States1991 in 1.7M279Yah41
PH Philippines≈180 est.≈1 in 595K—Yah9
CA Canada≈37 est.≈1 in 1M—Yah2
GT Guatemala≈26 est.≈1 in 651K—Yah3

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: nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Yah is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname19 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Yåh, Yàh, Ÿah, Ÿãh, Ÿâh

  • Malay surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Indonesia, United States, Singapore

    Languages: Malay, Indonesian

    Also written Yah', Yàh, Yäh

  • French surname13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Côte d’Ivoire, Belgium, Cameroon

    Also written Yàh, Ÿâh, Yâh, Ÿah, Ÿãh

  • Thai given name13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written ยะห์, ยาห, Yaha, ยาห์, ย่าห

  • Hindi surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Malaysia, Pakistan, United States

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Yäĥ, Yăh

42 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Yah 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 nv, inside, into an enclosed space, into an enclosure

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • ISO 639-3 language code for Yazghulami.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In kde, throw

    as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003

  • In anx, fire

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

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)

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)

FormalEstimado/a Yah,Dear Yah, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Yah,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 16 sources across 9 countries.

Official registers attesting Yah
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
CI Côte d’Ivoirenomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies—1.8K#321
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020279#74,639
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010199#92,358
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000137#117,538
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (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 Yah mean, and where does it come from?
Yes. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Yah?
A machine transcription gives /ʝa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
In which country does Yah have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 3.9 thousand people named Yah in Côte d’Ivoire, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Yah?
In the United States, the national register counted 199 people named Yah in 2010, about 1 in 1.7 million residents.

What do you want to know about Yah?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/yah

The 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, “Yah”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Yah parses inside a full name →