Bah
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Expressing contempt, disgust, or bad temper
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ba/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bah is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Guinea than in any other country, where it is the 4th most common surname.
- MLMali≈1 in 322(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 71K
- GNGuinea≈1 in 25
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.
- Guinea (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 278 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 25 (inferred from the name graph)
≈500,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Guinea, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Expressing contempt, disgust, or bad temper.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bah 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GN Guinea | #4 | ≈500,000 est. | ≈1 in 25 | 13 | Bah | 32 |
| ML Mali | #5 | ≈61,000 est. | ≈1 in 322 | 1 | Bah | 26 |
| SN Senegal | #74 | ≈47,000 est. | ≈1 in 334 | 6 | Bah | 37 |
| GM Gambia | #4 | ≈39,000 est. | ≈1 in 55 | 11 | Bah | 73 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | ≈37,000 est. | ≈1 in 748 | 7K | — | 28 |
| US United States | — | 4,690 | 1 in 71K | 7.6K | Bah | 278 |
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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024); DGE — Liste provisoire des candidatures communales Conakry 2026; IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 2022. 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)
Bah 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.
Diallo
as a nameA Handbook of African Names
In Khmer, to sell in large quantity and with limited profit. CylotOICLJ to throw (away), to abandon. CLflUglU to vote, to elect. o CqiUginawSwn&nCqi to vote to select a deputy, to elect a representative. fnj EipS m universal franchise. ° fflf CqpS CglUHftHnOJ limited franchise. ° election time
as a wordHeadley, Cambodian-English Dictionary, Volume I (ក-ភ)
In Khmer, to rise, to stand up, to become erect (as a dog’s tail, ear, etc.). {see: UU° J UoCipJ to rebel, to revolt; to riot; revolting, protesting
as a wordHeadley, Cambodian-English Dictionary, Volume I (ក-ភ)
In Khmer, uneven, warped, having one side lower than the other
as a wordHeadley, Cambodian-English Dictionary, Volume I (ក-ភ)
In Khmer, to fix, to plant, to force in; to imprint
as a wordHeadley, Cambodian-English Dictionary, Volume I (ក-ភ)
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)
- Johann Christoph Bach IIIb. 1671DEnot in their usual nameOrganist in Ohrdruf
- Johann Sebastian Bachb. 1685DEnot in their usual nameGerman composer (1685–1750)
- Anna Magdalena Bachb. 1701DEnot in their usual nameGerman singer and the second wife of Johann Sebastian Bach (1701-1760)
- Wilhelm Friedemann Bachb. 1710DEnot in their usual nameGerman composer, organist, harpsichordist (1710-1784)
- Johann Christoph Friedrich Bachb. 1732DEnot in their usual nameGerman musician and composer (1732–1795)
- Johann Christian Bachb. 1735DEnot in their usual nameGerman composer (1735–1782)
- Erich von dem Bach-Zelewskib. 1899DEnot in their usual nameGerman politician and SS functionary (1899–1972)
- Richard Bachb. 1936USnot in their usual nameAmerican spiritual writer (born 1936)
- Barbara Bachb. 1946USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Thomas Bachb. 1953DEnot in their usual nameGerman fencer, lawyer and sports official; 9th president of the International Olympic Committee since 2013
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 53 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.6K | #4,552 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies | — | 7K | #85 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4.7K | #7,130 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.7K | #16,062 |
| GN Guinea | DGE — Liste provisoire des candidatures communales Conakry 2026 | 2026 | 13 | #8 |
| GM Gambia | IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 2022 | 2022 | 11 | #3 |
| SN Senegal | DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024) | 2024 | 6 | #65 |
| GM Gambia | IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 2022 | 2022 | 1 | #2 |
| ML Mali | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 1 | #108 |
| GN Guinea | Patronymes de Guinée — Fodé Tass Sylla surname inventory (432 noms de famille) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Bah mean, and where does it come from?
- Expressing contempt, disgust, or bad temper. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Bah?
- A machine transcription gives /ba/ (IPA) for French.
- In which country does Bah have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 504 thousand people named Bah in Guinea, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bah.
- How common is the name Bah?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,690 people named Bah in 2010, about 1 in 71 thousand residents.
- How common is Bah compared with other names?
- In Guinea, Bah is the 4th most common surname of 427 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bah?
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/bahThe 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, “Bah” — the 4th most common surname in Guinea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.