Fatou
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Beloved by all
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/fatu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Fatou is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Senegal than in any other country, where it is the 6th most common given name.
- SNSenegal≈1 in 81(inferred from the name graph)
- FRFrance≈1 in 9.4K
- USUnited States1 in 138K
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.
- Senegal (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 247 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 81 (inferred from the name graph)
≈190,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Senegal, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Beloved by all.
Sources 1
- The African book of names
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Fatou 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SN Senegal | #6 | ≈190,000 est. | ≈1 in 81 | 277 | Fatou | 73 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | 673 | — | 20 |
| GN Guinea | — | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 460 | 5 | — | 8 |
| GM Gambia | — | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 109 | 3 | — | — |
| FR France | #963 | ≈7,200 est. | ≈1 in 9.4K | 3K | Fatou | 247 |
| ML Mali | — | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 7.4K | 4 | — | 21 |
| US United States | — | 2,402 | 1 in 138K | 2.4K | Fatou | 191 |
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); DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; DGE — Liste provisoire des candidatures communales Conakry 2026; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Fatou Bensoudab. 1961GMGambian lawyer and judge, Chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (2012–2021)
- Fatou N'Diayeb. 1962SNFrench-Senegalese basketball player (born 1962)
- Fatou Diomeb. 1968SNFrench-Senegalese writer
- Fatou Kande Senghorb. 1971SNSenegalese artist, filmmaker and photographer
- Fatou N'Diayeb. 1980SNFrench actress
- Fatou Diengb. 1983MRMauritanian sprinter
- Fatou Baldehb. 1983GMGambian human rights activist and women's rights activist
- Fatou Tiyanab. 1987GMathletics competitor
- Fatou Jallowb. 1996GMGambian beauty pageant contestant
- Fatou Elise Baactress
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 52 sources across 30 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 3K | #448 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.4K | #6,628 |
| SN Senegal | DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024) | 2024 | 277 | #2 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 56 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 21 | #6,628 |
| GN Guinea | DGE — Liste provisoire des candidatures communales Conakry 2026 | 2026 | 5 | #11 |
| ML Mali | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 4 | #61 |
| GM Gambia | IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 2022 | 2022 | 3 | #1 |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname 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 Fatou mean, and where does it come from?
- Beloved by all. Recorded by The African book of names.
- How do you pronounce Fatou?
- A machine transcription gives /fatu/ (IPA) for French.
- Is Fatou a male or female name?
- Fatou is a female 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.
- What are other forms of the name Fatou?
- In the etymology graph, Fatma, Fadime and Fatimah are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Fatou have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 194 thousand people named Fatou in Senegal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fatou.
- How common is the name Fatou?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,402 people named Fatou in 2020, about 1 in 138 thousand residents.
- How common is Fatou compared with other names?
- In Senegal, Fatou is the 6th most common given name of 3,375 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Fatou?
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/fatouThe 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, “Fatou” — the 6th most common given name in Senegal. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.