Boubou
given name · Latin script
Meaning: boubou (African robe)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/bubu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Boubou is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Mali than in any other country, where it is the 43rd most common given name.
- FRFrance≈1 in 32K(inferred from the name graph)
- SNSenegal≈1 in 2.8K
- MLMali≈1 in 3.1K
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.
- Mali (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 151 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈6,300 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Senegal, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
boubou (African robe)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Boubou 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ML Mali | #43 | ≈6,300 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | 1 | Boubou | 24 |
| SN Senegal | #162 | ≈5,700 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 3 | Boubou | 17 |
| FR France | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 32K | 605 | Boubou | 151 |
| DZ Algeria | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 21K | listed | Boubou | 11 |
| MR Mauritania | #17 | ≈830 est. | ≈1 in 4.8K | — | Boubou | 10 |
| ES Spain | — | 218 | 1 in 229K | 218 | Boubou | 21 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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)
Boubou is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, bird
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, A flowing wide-sleeved robe worn by men in much of West Africa, and to a lesser extent in North Africa.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Breton, murmure; frou-frou
as a wordDeshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (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)
- Boubou Hamab. 1906NENigerien author, historian, and politician (1906-1982)
- Boubou Cisseb. 1974MLMalian politician
- Jimmy Kébéb. 1984FRnot in their usual nameMalian-French footballer (born 1984)
- Boubou Ndiayeb. 1985MRMauritanian association football player
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 17 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 605 | #1,521 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 218 | #8,447 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 174 | #4,646 |
| SN Senegal | DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024) | 2024 | 3 | #68 |
| ML Mali | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 1 | #191 |
| DZ Algeria | Algerian names (Kaggle, MIT) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Boubou mean, and where does it come from?
- boubou (African robe) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Boubou?
- A machine transcription gives /bubu/ (IPA) for French.
- Is Boubou a male or female name?
- Boubou 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 Boubou have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 6.3 thousand people named Boubou in Mali, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled boubou.
- How common is the name Boubou?
- In Spain, the national register counted 218 people named Boubou, about 1 in 229 thousand residents.
- How common is Boubou compared with other names?
- In Mali, Boubou is the 43rd most common given name of 2,109 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Boubou?
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/boubouThe 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, “Boubou” — the 43rd most common given name in Mali. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.