Mustapha
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Alternative form of Mustafa
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mustafa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Mustapha is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 553(inferred from the name graph)
- GMGambia≈1 in 192
- MAMorocco≈1 in 284
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 71 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 192 (inferred from the name graph)
≈390,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Gambia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Arabic; means « l’élu », from the Prophet’s epithet.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Mustapha is read(measured from records)
Mustapha is one spelling over 4 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.
- English29%
Alternative form of Mustafa.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French26%
Arabic; means « l’élu », from the Prophet’s epithet.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Arabic from Mustafa, meaning 'the chosen one'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
- Arabic19%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Mustapha in Arabic.
- Swahili7.9%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Mustapha in Swahili.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Mustapha 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | ≈390,000 est. | ≈1 in 553 | — | Mustapha | 38 |
| MA Morocco | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 284 | — | Mustapha | 21 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈56,000 est. | ≈1 in 768 | — | Mustapha | 7 |
| FR France | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | 9.4K | — | 2 |
| ES Spain | 11,880 | 1 in 4.2K | 12K | Mustapha | 14 |
| GM Gambia | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 192 | 3 | — | — |
| SL Sierra Leone | ≈5,500 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 33 | — | — |
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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); NEC/ECSL — 2018 Local Council, Chairperson and Mayor nominated candidates; 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Mustapha is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, Turkish personal name; on the page altered to Mustopf
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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)
- Alemdar Mustafa Paşab. 1755UAnot in their usual nameOttoman Grand Vizier (1755-1808)
- Mustapha Harunb. 1918MYpolitician and independent leader from Sabah, Malaysia
- Mustapha El Ankab. 1926DZAlgerian actor (1926-1993)
- Mustapha Zitounib. 1928FRFrench and Algerian footballer (1928-2014)
- Mustapha Moussab. 1962DZAlgerian boxer (1962–2024)
- Mustapha Ishak-Boushakib. 1967USAlgerian professor, cosmologist, astrophysicist, researcher and university teacher
- Mustapha Adibb. 1972LBLebanese academic, diplomat, politician
- Mustapha El Atrassib. 1985FRFrench television presenter and humorist
- Mustapha Ghorbalb. 1985DZAlgerian association football referee
- Mustapha Yatabaréb. 1986FRMalian and French footballer
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 75 sources across 40 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 12K | #489 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 11K | #246 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 9.4K | #1,404 |
| SL Sierra Leone | NEC/ECSL — 2018 Local Council, Chairperson and Mayor nominated candidates | 2018 | 33 | #17 |
| SL Sierra Leone | NEC/ECSL — 2012 Councillor and Ordinary-MP/PCMP results tables | 2012 | 16 | #15 |
| SL Sierra Leone | NEC/ECSL — 2012 parliamentary and Local Council nominated candidates | 2012 | 15 | #8 |
| GM Gambia | IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 2022 | 2022 | 3 | #9 |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Mustapha mean?
- In English, Alternative form of Mustafa.
- Where does the name Mustapha come from?
- Arabic; means « l’élu », from the Prophet’s epithet. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- In which country does Mustapha have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 387 thousand people named Mustapha in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mustapha.
- How do you pronounce Mustapha?
- A machine transcription gives /mustafa/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Mustapha a male or female name?
- Mustapha 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.
- What are other forms of the name Mustapha?
- In the etymology graph, Mustafa, Mostafa and Moustapha are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Mustapha?
- In Spain, the national register counted 11,880 people named Mustapha, about 1 in 4.2 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Mustapha?
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/mustaphaThe 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, “Mustapha”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.