Names of Sierra Leone SL

Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments records Alice as the commonest given name in Sierra Leone and Kamara as the commonest surname.

Written in English.

Population
6.6M
Official registers
8
Name forms recorded
66
BBuilt from 8 official registers (2023), 66 name forms in our corpus.

At least one official register, plus a written account of the naming system.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of Sierra Leone are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Sierra Leone included.

How names work in Sierra Leone

Names in Sierra Leone follow one naming tradition. Its structure, its given-name and surname stock, how to address someone and what trips software up are set out on its own page.

The most common names in Sierra Leone

Counts officeholders · authority tier 3
Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments, 2023 — 37 given names counted over officeholders.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Alice2—
1Doris2—
1Hawa2—
1Mariama2—
1Millicent2—
1Mohamed2—
1Patricia2—
1Rebecca2—
2Amie1—
2Aminata1—
2Annie1—
2Beatrice1—
2Betty1—
2Chernor1—
2Eleanor1—
2Elise1—
2Fatmata1—
2Fatu1—
2Florence1—
2Harold1—

Where the two lists disagree

25 of Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments's top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments 2023Across all recordsalice: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. alicenot rankeddoris: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. dorisnot rankedhawa: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. hawanot rankedmariama: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. mariamanot rankedmillicent: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. millicentnot rankedmohamed: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. mohamednot rankedpatricia: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. patricianot rankedrebecca: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. rebeccanot rankedamie: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. amienot rankedaminata: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. aminatanot rankedannie: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. annienot rankedbeatrice: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. beatricenot rankedbetty: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. bettynot rankedchernor: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. chernornot rankedeleanor: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. eleanornot rankedelise: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. elisenot rankedfatmata: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. fatmatanot rankedfatu: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. fatunot rankedflorence: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. florencenot rankedharold: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. haroldnot rankedhellen: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. hellennot rankedisatu: 2 → 58 · ranks lower across all records2. isatu58jeneba: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. jenebanot rankedkhadie: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. khadienot rankedmagdalene: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. magdalenenot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments, 2023 on the left; every record we hold for Sierra Leone on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of Sierra Leone

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Sierra Leone holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

Kamara
Sized by how much of the difference between Sierra Leone's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.(measured from records)

Scripts & spelling

Kamarasurname(measured from records)
Sesaysurname(measured from records)
Bangurasurname(measured from records)
Koromasurname(measured from records)
Jallohsurname(measured from records)
The best-attested names in Sierra Leone, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-10-09.

Questions

What is the most common given name in Sierra Leone?
Alice, according to Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments (2023), with 2 bearers recorded.
What is the most common surname in Sierra Leone?
Kamara, according to Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments (2023), with 5 bearers recorded.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Sierra Leone?
Because they count different people. Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments (2023) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Alice. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Isatu. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Sierra Leone”, https://mondonomo.ai/names/SL (data snapshot 2026-10-09). Official figures from Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments.