Kgosi
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kgosi is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country. In Botswana it is the 64th most common given name. In English, recorded as A tribal chief among the Tswana people of southern Africa.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 23K(inferred from the name graph)
- BWBotswana≈1 in 1.6K
- GYGuyana1 in 750K
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.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 31 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,500 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Botswana, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A tribal chief among the Tswana people of southern Africa.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
How Kgosi is read(measured from records)
Kgosi is one spelling over 3 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.
- English51%
A tribal chief among the Tswana people of southern Africa.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Swahili22%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kgosi in Swahili.
- Southern Sotho6.2%
chief, chieftain; king
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Kgosi 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Kgosi | 31 |
| BW Botswana | #64 | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Kgosi | 13 |
| US United States | — | ≈5 est. | ≈1 in 64M | — | Kgosi | 19 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈5 est. | ≈1 in 17M | — | Kgosi | 6 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4 est. | ≈1 in 18M | — | Kgosi | 11 |
| GY Guyana | — | 1 | 1 in 750K | 1 | — | 1 |
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: Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Kgosi is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Tswana, Means 'chief, king' in Setswana.
as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames
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)
- Kgosi Galesheweb. 1840ZAchief of the Tlhapin (1840–1927)
- Kgosi Ntlheb. 1994ZASouth African association football player
- Kgosi LetlapeZASouth African ophthalmologist
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 2 sources across 1 country.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 1 | #593 |
Reference works 1
- 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 Kgosi mean, and where does it come from?
- A tribal chief among the Tswana people of southern Africa. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Kgosi a male or female name?
- Kgosi is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Kgosi have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.5 thousand people named Kgosi in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kgosi.
- How common is the name Kgosi?
- In Guyana, the national register counted 1 people named Kgosi in 2025, about 1 in 750 thousand residents.
- How common is Kgosi compared with other names?
- In Botswana, Kgosi is the 64th most common given name of 423 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kgosi?
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/kgosiThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Kgosi” — the 64th most common given name in Botswana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.