Makeba
given name · Latin script
Meaning: South African: surname of Miriam Makeba, the vocalist called "Mama Africa"
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Makeba is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 516K(measured from records)
- GYGuyana1 in 44K
- JMJamaica≈1 in 146K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 194 (measured from records)
- 1 in 44K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,900 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
South African: surname of Miriam Makeba, the vocalist called "Mama Africa"
Sources 1
- African Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Makeba 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 484K | — | Makeba | 2 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈940 est. | ≈1 in 248K | — | Makeba | 1 |
| US United States | 645 | 1 in 516K | 621 | Makeba | 194 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈84 est. | ≈1 in 786K | — | Makeba | 37 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈64 est. | ≈1 in 882K | — | Makeba | 8 |
| JM Jamaica | ≈19 est. | ≈1 in 146K | — | Makeba | 5 |
| GY Guyana | 17 | 1 in 44K | 17 | Makeba | 2 |
| IS Iceland | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 155K | 1 | — | — |
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; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Makeba is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
South Africa: African name
as a nameAfrican Names
In Xhosa, Xhosa surname documented to mean "precious jewel.".
as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames
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)
- Makeba Riddickb. 1953USAmerican singer-songwriter
- Makeba Alcideb. 1990LCSaint Lucian athlete
- Makeba Rose Alcida Permalb. 2001MUMauritian handball 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 14 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 621 | #17,205 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1972 | 63 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1973 | 52 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1970 | 49 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1971 | 44 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1975 | 37 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1974 | 37 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1977 | 35 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1978 | 33 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1969 | 33 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1976 | 32 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1968 | 27 | — |
Reference works 3
- 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 Makeba mean, and where does it come from?
- South African: surname of Miriam Makeba, the vocalist called "Mama Africa" Recorded by African Names.
- Is Makeba a male or female name?
- Makeba 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.
- In which country does Makeba have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.9 thousand people named Makeba in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled makeba.
- Where is Makeba most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Makeba is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 44 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Makeba?
- In the United States, the national register counted 645 people named Makeba in 2020, about 1 in 516 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Makeba?
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/makebaThe 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, “Makeba”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.