Obey

surname · Latin script

Meaning: v., ngs = WO meni = hear the word; obey- ing, menila

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

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

Obey is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country. In the Central African Republic it is the 22nd most common surname.

rarermore common
  • NGNigeria≈1 in 34K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 456K
  • CFCentral African Republic≈1 in 1.6K

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)

≈6,300 people, est.

Sources
200 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.6K (inferred from the name graph)

Central African Republic, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

v., ngs = WO meni = hear the word; obey- ing, menila

Sources 1

  • Vocabulary of the Mende Language

Where in the world(measured from records)

Obey 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 Obey is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NG Nigeria—≈6,300 est.≈1 in 34K—Obey30
CF Central African Republic#22≈3,800 est.≈1 in 1.6K—Obey1
US United States—7301 in 456K739Obey200
DZ Algeria—≈360 est.≈1 in 120K—Obey4
GB United Kingdom—≈200 est.≈1 in 327K67Obey55
NZ New Zealand—≈26 est.≈1 in 188K—Obey1

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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register). 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)

Obey is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname19 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Öbëy, Ôbey, Óbey, Õbëy, Obéŷ

  • French surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Central African Republic, Congo - Kinshasa

    Also written Obéy, Ôbèy, Ốbey, Obëy

  • Turkish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Ghana

    Also written Öbey, Obëÿ

48 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)

Obey 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.

  • In English, To do as ordered by (a person, institution etc), to act according to the bidding of.

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

  • In English, David, US politician

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

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)

18801900192019401960André Obey, b. 1892Dave Obey, b. 1938Arnold Obey, b. 1947

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)

FormalDear Mr Obey,
InformalHi Obey,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 14 sources across 4 countries.

Official registers attesting Obey
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020739#33,232
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010730#31,656
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000716#30,716
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)200267#42,509
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 Obey mean, and where does it come from?
v., ngs = WO meni = hear the word; obey- ing, menila Recorded by Vocabulary of the Mende Language.
How do you pronounce Obey?
A machine transcription gives /oʊbeɪ/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Obey have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 6.3 thousand people named Obey in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled obey.
How common is the name Obey?
In the United States, the national register counted 730 people named Obey in 2010, about 1 in 456 thousand residents.
How common is Obey compared with other names?
In the Central African Republic, Obey is the 22nd most common surname of 1,109 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Obey?

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/obey

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, “Obey” — the 22nd most common surname in Central African Republic. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Obey parses inside a full name →