Balela
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Clear skies
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries
/balela/(machine-generated) Spanish · model-generated
Balela is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 250Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- BRBrazil1 in 6.4M
- INIndia1 in 47M
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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 10 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 153K (inferred from the name graph)
≈470 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Tanzania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Clear skies.
Cited for this meaning 1
- The African book of names
Where the surname Balela is found
(measured from records)Balela 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | ≈470 est. | ≈1 in 246K | — | Balela | 9 |
| TZ Tanzania | ≈450 est. | ≈1 in 153K | 1 | Balela | 5 |
| BR Brazil | 33 | 1 in 6.4M | 33 | Balela | 5 |
| IN India | 28 | 1 in 47M | 28 | — | 1 |
| US United States | ≈22 est. | ≈1 in 16M | — | Balela | 10 |
| PT Portugal | ≈13 est. | ≈1 in 837K | — | Balela | 7 |
| KE Kenya | ≈13 est. | ≈1 in 4.3M | — | Balela | 4 |
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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results. 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)Balela 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 Zulu, to shine
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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.
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)5 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 4 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Balela mean, and where does it come from?
- Clear skies. Recorded by The African book of names.
- How do you pronounce Balela?
- It depends on the language: in Spanish /balela/; in Portuguese /baˈlɛ.la/ (Wiktionary); in Swahili /ɓalɛlɑ/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Balela?
- Mondonomo estimates about 471 people named Balela in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled balela. After it come Tanzania, Brazil, India and United States; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Balela?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 33 people named Balela, about 1 in 6.4 million residents.
What do you want to know about Balela?
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/balelaThe 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, “Balela”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.