Tembe

surname · Latin script

Meaning: hen (female bird)

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

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

Tembe is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Mozambique than in any other country, where it is the 13th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 3.9K(inferred from the name graph)
  • BRBrazil1 in 103K
  • MZMozambique≈1 in 424

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.

Mozambique (inferred from the name graph)

≈71,000 people, est.

Sources
68 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 424 (inferred from the name graph)

Mozambique, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

hen (female bird)

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world(measured from records)

Tembe 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 Tembe is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
MZ Mozambique#13≈71,000 est.≈1 in 424—Tembe43
ZA South Africa#419≈15,000 est.≈1 in 3.9K—Tembe41
BR Brazil—2,0601 in 103K2.1KTembe24
TZ Tanzania—≈530 est.≈1 in 111K—Tembe9
SZ Eswatini—≈440 est.≈1 in 2.5K2—6
CM Cameroon—≈330 est.≈1 in 85K—Tembe7

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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Eswatini EBC 2023 Secondary Elections candidate ballots. 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)

Tembe is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, South Africa, Belgium, Congo - Kinshasa

    Also written Tembé

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Ṭembe

  • Arabic surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in South Africa, India

    Also written Tembé

39 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)

Tembe 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 Tsonga, Old Tsonga (Ronga) clan; appears among the Varonga of the coastal/southern Mozambique region and within the Khalanga grouping. Royal/ancestral clan name of the Tembe people; literal meaning uncertain.

    as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames

  • In bnt-pro, tree: Fabaceae: Erythrina abyssinica

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

  • In Latvian, Dažos Austrumāfrikas apvidos sastopams dzīvojamās ēkas tips, parasti 8 m gara, 4 m plata un 2 m augsta, segta ar lēzenu jumtu, nereti līdz pusei iegremdēta zemē, ar zaru pinuma un mālu apmetuma sienām

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In bnt-pro, arbre: Fabaceae: Erythrina abyssinica

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

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)

FormalDear Tembe,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 11 sources across 9 countries.

Official registers attesting Tembe
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—2.1K#4,745
SZ EswatiniEswatini EBC 2023 Secondary Elections candidate ballots20232#49

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 Tembe mean, and where does it come from?
hen (female bird) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Tembe?
A machine transcription gives /tm/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Tembe have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 71 thousand people named Tembe in Mozambique, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tembe.
How common is the name Tembe?
In Brazil, the national register counted 2,060 people named Tembe, about 1 in 103 thousand residents.
How common is Tembe compared with other names?
In Mozambique, Tembe is the 13th most common surname of 2,021 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Tembe?

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

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, “Tembe” — the 13th most common surname in Mozambique. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Tembe parses inside a full name →