Find out how popular the last name Boa is in the United States and learn more about the meaning, history, and race and ethnic origin of people in America who are named Boa.

Boa, like all of the last names we have data for, is identified by the U.S. Census Bureau as a surname which has more than 100 occurrences in the United States in the Decennial Census survey. The most recent statistics we have for the Boa surname is from the 2010 census data.

Popularity of Boa in America

Boa is the 87335th most popular name in America based on the data we have collected from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Boa surname appeared 213 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 0 people would have the surname Boa.

We can also compare 2010 data for Boa to data from the previous census in 2000. The table below contains all of the statistics for both years in a side-by-side comparison.

The history of the last name Boa

The surname BOA originated in Portugal during the 16th century. It derived from the old Portuguese word "boa" meaning a great serpent or snake. The name may have originally referred to someone who lived near a place inhabited by snakes or bore some resemblance to a snake.

One of the earliest recorded examples of the BOA surname dates back to 1578 in a parish registry from the town of Aveiro, Portugal. A man named Joao da Boa was listed as a witness to a christening ceremony. The surname was also found in other parts of northern Portugal during this era, often spelled as Boa or Boa da Silva.

In the 17th century, the BOA surname appeared in records from the Portuguese colonization of Brazil. Antonio da Boa, born in 1623 in Rio de Janeiro, was a notable explorer and navigator who mapped parts of the Amazon River basin. His descendants continued using the BOA surname for several generations in Brazil.

During the 18th century, the BOA name spread to other parts of Europe. Jacobus Boa, a Dutch merchant born in 1712 in Amsterdam, established trade routes between the Netherlands and Portugal. He adopted the Portuguese spelling of his surname after marrying into a Portuguese family.

One of the most famous people with the BOA surname was Francisco Xavier Boa, a Portuguese Catholic missionary born in 1795. He spent over 30 years spreading Christianity in India and East Africa before his death in 1835. The town of Boa Vista in modern-day Mozambique was named after him.

Other notable individuals with the BOA surname include British naval captain Thomas Boa (1767-1825), who served in the Napoleonic Wars, and Spanish artist Rafael Boa Crespo (1853-1912), renowned for his portrait paintings of the Spanish nobility.

Race and ethnic origin of people with the last name Boa

We also have some data on the ancestry of people with the surname Boa.

The below race categories are the modified race categories used in the Census Bureau's population estimates program. All people were categorized into six mutually exclusive racial and Hispanic origin groups:

1. White only
2. Black only
3. American Indian and Alaskan Native only
4. Asian and Pacific Islander only
5. Hispanic
6. Two or More Races

For the most recent 2010 census data, the race/ethnic origin breakdown for Boa was:

Note: Any fields showing (S) means the data was suppressed for privacy so that the data does not in any way identify any specific individuals.

Since we have data from the previous census in 2000, we can also compare the values to see how the popularity of Boa has changed in the 10 years between the two census surveys.

Data source

The last name data and ethnic breakdown of last names is sourced directly from the Decennial Census survey, conducted every 10 years by the United States Census Bureau.

The history and meaning of the name Boa was researched and written by our team of onomatology and genealogy experts.

If you have a correction or suggestion to improve the history of Boa, please contact us.

Reference this page

We spend a lot of resources downloading, cleaning, merging, and formatting the data that is shown on the site.

If you found the data or information on this page useful in your research, please use the tool below to properly cite or reference Name Census as the source. We appreciate your support!