Be
loc · Latin script
Meaning: from a pet-form of Beton or Beatrice plus diminutive suffix -coc; first attested Henricus filius Becok 1332 SRLa
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Be is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 58K(inferred from the name graph)
- CHSwitzerland≈1 in 73K
- USUnited States1 in 137K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 219 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 32K (inferred from the name graph)
2,429 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from a pet-form of Beton or Beatrice plus diminutive suffix -coc; first attested Henricus filius Becok 1332 SRLa.
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Be 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 2,429 | 1 in 137K | 1.7K | Be | 219 |
| DE Germany | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 58K | — | Be | 81 |
| FR France | ≈420 est. | ≈1 in 161K | 36 | Be | 3 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | ≈400 est. | ≈1 in 68K | 484 | — | 1 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈390 est. | ≈1 in 168K | — | Be | 85 |
| AT Austria | ≈280 est. | ≈1 in 32K | — | Be | 19 |
| PT Portugal | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 64K | listed | Be | 1 |
| CH Switzerland | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 73K | 6 | Be | 14 |
2,429 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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: BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); the portuguese-names-barbosa-1990 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)
Be 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 German, flat sign, ♭
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Basque, *-(i)zan- (suppletive stem of the approximate form *-a-)
as a wordTrask, Etymological Dictionary of Basque (2008 posthumous draft)
In dag, 1. to be present ‘exist; be alive; live, dwell 2. to exist 3. to be at a certain place. be mii ni v.p. to be in trouble what is the mii ? be tooni v.p. ‘lead’ (lit.: be in front) tooni benibu ‘leading’
as a wordDagbani Dictionary CD
In Akan, adv, used of the effect o£ pinching: otime ara be, he pinches me sharply, that I feel it keenly; cf. bee, bew, v. & adv, e-be, pi, m-, proverb t parable, nddle; bu be, to tdter, teU or make a proverb
as a wordDictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi)
In kr, not! wote, ad. not. — see Gram. §. 236, 1. and 293, 3. zvu, pron. I. zvuagdngin, v. (used only in the third pers. , as: wuagdtse
as a wordKanuri-English Vocabulary (in African Native Literature)
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)
- Clare BeGBactress
- Be Heintzman HopeCAperforming artist in Canada
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 41 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.7K | #6,566 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 772 | #6,566 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1919 | 5 | — |
| PT Portugal | Um Nome Para o Bebê (Barbosa, 1990) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Be mean, and where does it come from?
- from a pet-form of Beton or Beatrice plus diminutive suffix -coc; first attested Henricus filius Becok 1332 SRLa. Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Be have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.4 thousand people named Be, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled be.
- How common is the name Be?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,429 people named Be in 2020, about 1 in 137 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Be?
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/beThe 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, “Be”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.