Kanté

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Kanté is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Guinea than in any other country. In Mali it is the 27th most common surname. Recorded meaning: A common surname in West Africa, especially in Mali and Guinea.

rarermore common
  • FRFrance≈1 in 15K(inferred from the name graph)
  • GNGuinea≈1 in 499
  • SNSenegal≈1 in 676

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)

≈25,000 people, est.

Sources
199 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 499 (inferred from the name graph)

Guinea, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Kante in FR France, CI Côte d’Ivoire, ES Spain and 3 more.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

A common surname in West Africa, especially in Mali and Guinea.

Sources 1

Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Kanté 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 Kanté is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GN Guinea—≈25,000 est.≈1 in 4992—12
SN Senegal#77≈23,000 est.≈1 in 6765Kante30
CI Côte d’Ivoire—≈22,000 est.≈1 in 1.2K3.7KKante16
ML Mali#27≈14,000 est.≈1 in 1.4K5Kante29
FR France#866≈4,600 est.≈1 in 15K575Kante199
ES Spain—9731 in 51K973Kante25
SR Suriname#471≈110 est.≈1 in 5.4K—Kante2

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 noms de famille (1891–2000); nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; DGE — Liste provisoire des candidatures communales Conakry 2026. 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)

Kanté is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Arabic surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Algeria, Kuwait, Egypt, Libya

    Also written Kante, Käñté, Kantė, Kantè, Kãntê

  • French (Côte d’Ivoire) surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Côte d’Ivoire

    Also written Kante

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Kante

  • French (Guinea) surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Guinea, Senegal

    Also written Kante

  • Japanese surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Japan

    Also written Kante, Kantè

  • Korean surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States

    Also written Kante

19 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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

12001400160018002000Sumanguru Kanté, b. 1300Solomana Kante, b. 1922Mory Kanté, b. 1950Ibrahim Kanté, b. 1981Manuel Kanté, b. 1986Ousmane Kanté, b. 1989Massiré Kanté, b. 1989N'Golo Kanté, b. 1991Aboubakary Kanté, b. 1994Manamba Kanté, b. 1996

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 10 sources across 5 countries.

Official registers attesting Kanté
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ML MaliWikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names—5#44
GN GuineaPatronymes de Guinée — Fodé Tass Sylla surname inventory (432 noms de famille)———

Reference works 4

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

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 Kanté mean, and where does it come from?
A common surname in West Africa, especially in Mali and Guinea. Recorded by Wiktionary.
In which country does Kanté have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 25 thousand people named Kanté in Guinea, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Kanté?
In Spain, the national register counted 973 people named Kanté, about 1 in 51 thousand residents.
How common is Kanté compared with other names?
In Mali, Kanté is the 27th most common surname of 7,873 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Kanté?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kant%C3%A9

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, “Kanté” — the 27th most common surname in Mali. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kanté parses inside a full name →