Imani

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in Swahili: faith, belief

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

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

Imani is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • TZTanzania≈1 in 1.1K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 16K
  • JMJamaica≈1 in 39K

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.

Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)

≈51,000 people, est.

Sources
367 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.1K (inferred from the name graph)

Tanzania, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

faith, belief

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Imani is read(measured from records)

Imani is one spelling over 2 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.

  • English71%

    Swahili, 'faith'

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • Swahili7.5%

    faith, belief

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

    Kiswahili: faith

    as a nameAfrican Names

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Imani 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 Imani is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
TZ Tanzania#178≈51,000 est.≈1 in 1.1K—Imani36
US United States—21,0801 in 16K20KImani367
KE Kenya—≈960 est.≈1 in 56K—Imani23
NG Nigeria—≈780 est.≈1 in 273K—Imani21
MY Malaysia—≈280 est.≈1 in 119K—Imani22
JM Jamaica—≈71 est.≈1 in 39K—Imani16
GY Guyana—161 in 47K16—3

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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)

Imani is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Malay given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, United States, Indonesia, Tanzania

    Languages: Malay, Indonesian

    Also written Imani'

  • French given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, Tanzania

    Also written Imànî, Imanï, Ïmâni

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Imânî, Īmani, Imăni, Īmānī

  • Japanese given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Japan, United States, Tanzania, Malaysia

    Also written Imaní, Imáni

  • Bulgarian given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tanzania

    Languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Macedonian

    Also written Имани, Imany

52 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)

Imani 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.

  • Faith, belief, religion.

    as a nameThe African book of names

  • faith

    as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names

  • In Hausa, faith, belief (especially in Islam)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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)

1970198019902000Imani Perry, b. 1972Imani Coppola, b. 1978Imani Rose, b. 1986SZA, b. 1989Imani Hakim, b. 1993Imani Boyette, b. 1994Imani Dorsey, b. 1996Imani Williams, b. 1999

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)

InformalHi Imani,

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 79 sources across 46 countries.

Official registers attesting Imani
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202020K#1,549
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020969#1,549
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025512—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)202541—
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 2025202516#578

Reference works 5

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

Is Imani a male or female name?
Imani 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 does the name Imani mean, and where does it come from?
faith, belief Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Imani have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 51 thousand people named Imani in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled imani.
How common is the name Imani?
In the United States, the national register counted 21,080 people named Imani in 2020, about 1 in 16 thousand residents.
How common is Imani compared with other names?
In Tanzania, Imani is the 178th most common given name of 37,285 given names recorded there.
How do you pronounce Imani?
A machine transcription gives /ɪmɑni/ (IPA) for English.
What are other forms of the name Imani?
In the etymology graph, Eman, Iman and Imane are forms of the same name in other languages.

What do you want to know about Imani?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Imani” — the 178th most common given name in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Imani parses inside a full name →