Musa
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Swahili And Muslim Name Popular Among The Wolof Of Senegal, Meaning "Mercy" Or "Saved From The Water."
- Origin
- African
About the Name Musa
Musa is the Arabic form of Moses, a name of enormous significance across Islamic, Jewish, and Christian tradition; it is widely understood to mean "saved from the water," echoing the prophet drawn from the river, and it is also embraced for its warm sense of mercy. Popular across West Africa, including among the Wolof of Senegal, and throughout the wider Muslim world, it carries deep spiritual and historical weight.
Its appeal lies in that combination of reverence and simplicity — two open, balanced syllables that translate gracefully across many languages and cultures. Musa reads as both ancient and approachable, a name of prophets that nonetheless feels easy, gentle, and warm in everyday use, equally at home in many countries and tongues without ever needing to be explained.
Musa is a recent entrant to the US Social Security top-1000, first appearing for boys in 2014 and reaching its peak in the most recent year tracked, 2024, at rank #525, with 566 boys given the name that year; it had stood at #653 in 2023 and #719 in 2022 as it rose. Having accumulated 3,543 boys across this run, Musa is a name of long global heritage that is steadily and visibly gaining ground in American naming — ancient, reverent, and yet strikingly simple and contemporary on a modern birth certificate, at home in many lands at once.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Musa
US Popularity History (2014–2025)
Annual US births named Musa by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2025 with 651 boys named Musa (boy rank #470 that year).
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Musa Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Musa the strongest states are New York, Connecticut, New Jersey.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | #348 | 495 |
| 2 | Connecticut | #397 | 24 |
| 3 | New Jersey | #428 | 187 |
| 4 | Illinois | #449 | 235 |
| 5 | Virginia | #464 | 162 |
| 6 | Maryland | #488 | 112 |
| 7 | Michigan | #488 | 188 |
| 8 | Massachusetts | #622 | 47 |
| 9 | Pennsylvania | #627 | 139 |
| 10 | Minnesota | #648 | 56 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arizona | #844 | 26 |
| 2 | Georgia | #802 | 83 |
| 3 | Tennessee | #786 | 31 |
| 4 | Ohio | #760 | 101 |
| 5 | Texas | #756 | 336 |
| 6 | North Carolina | #748 | 36 |
| 7 | California | #733 | 316 |
| 8 | Washington | #729 | 73 |
| 9 | Minnesota | #648 | 56 |
| 10 | Pennsylvania | #627 | 139 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Musa in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Musa?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Musa to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Musa against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).