Baka
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: An evil spirit in Haitian belief, often in the form of an animal
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Baka is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 586K(measured from records)
- CICôte d’Ivoire≈1 in 11K
- PLPoland1 in 32K
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 168 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,700 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Côte d’Ivoire, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
An evil spirit in Haitian belief, often in the form of an animal.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
How Baka is read(measured from records)
Baka is one spelling over 5 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.
- English32%
An evil spirit in Haitian belief, often in the form of an animal.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Polish16%
seamark
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French11%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Baka in French.
- Hindi8.3%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Baka in Hindi.
- Turkish7.2%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Baka in Turkish.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Baka 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 57K | — | Baka | 25 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 11K | 515 | — | — |
| PL Poland | 1,189 | 1 in 32K | 603 | — | 1 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈620 est. | ≈1 in 70K | listed | — | 5 |
| US United States | 568 | 1 in 586K | 665 | Baka | 168 |
| UG Uganda | ≈510 est. | ≈1 in 85K | 1 | — | 2 |
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; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; Parliament of Uganda MP Database — 11th Parliament sitting members; the dz-kaggle-names 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)
Baka 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.
Rsi Baka Dalbhya (V, M)
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
permanence or abbreviation of
as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names
crane (symbol of longevity)
as a nameA Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India
In Russian, "wide, tall."
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
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)
- Józef Bakab. 1707BYPolish writer
- László Bakab. 1754HUHungarian reformed pastor (1754-1820)
- Władysław Bakab. 1936PLPolish economist and politician (1936-2021)
- István Bakab. 1948HUHungarian poet, translator (1948–1995)
- Baka Andrásb. 1952HUHungarian jurist and politician, President of Hungary (1952–)
- Mirosław Bakab. 1963PLPolish actor
- Latifa Bakab. 1964MAMoroccan writer
- Joanna Kreft-Bakab. 1964PLPolish actress
- Patrik L. Bakab. 1991CZHungarian prose writer, poet, literary critic, and university lecturer; working in Slovakia (1991–)
- Sándor Bakab. 1994HUHungarian rower
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 37 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 665 | #36,244 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 603 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 603 | #5,348 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 586 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 586 | #5,405 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 568 | #38,850 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 531 | #39,052 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies | — | 515 | #954 |
| UG Uganda | Parliament of Uganda MP Database — 11th Parliament sitting members | 2026 | 1 | #118 |
| DZ Algeria | Algerian names (Kaggle, MIT) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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 Baka mean, and where does it come from?
- An evil spirit in Haitian belief, often in the form of an animal. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Baka have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.7 thousand people named Baka in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled baka.
- How common is the name Baka?
- In Poland, the national register counted 1,189 people named Baka in 2026, about 1 in 32 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Baka?
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/bakaThe 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, “Baka”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.