Bambara
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A member of a Mandé ethnic group native to much of West Africa
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/bambəɹə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bambara is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- CHSwitzerland1 in 525K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 734K
- BEBelgium1 in 1.2M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 11 (measured from records)
- 1 in 525K (inferred from the name graph)
174 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Bambara (language)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Bambara is read(measured from records)
Bambara is one spelling over 3 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.
- English41%
lang., Africa
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
A member of a Mandé ethnic group native to much of West Africa.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French30%
Bambara (language)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish8.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Bambara in Spanish.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Bambara 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 174 | 1 in 1.9M | 197 | Bambara | 11 |
| ES Spain | 27 | 1 in 1.9M | 27 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 16 | 1 in 525K | 16 | — | — |
| AR Argentina | 16 | 1 in 2.8M | 16 | — | — |
| PL Poland | 11 | 1 in 3.5M | 6 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 10 | 1 in 1.2M | 10 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 8 | 1 in 734K | 8 | — | — |
174 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)
Bambara is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Bambara, alternative form of Bámánánkán (“Bambara”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Hungarian, Bambara (of or related to the Bambara people or their language)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, Bambara (West African language)
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Jean-Luc Bambarab. 1963BFBurkinabe sculptor
- Smockeyb. 1971BFnot in their usual nameBurkinabé musician, rapper, music executive and political activist.
- Lætitia Bambarab. 1984FRBurkinabé hammer thrower of French descent
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 20 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 197 | #98,501 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 174 | #103,181 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 150 | #109,328 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 27 | #69,298 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 27 | #67,696 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 16 | #43,070 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 16 | — |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 10 | #71,118 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 8 | #45,792 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 6 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 6 | #173,399 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 5 | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- Where does the name Bambara come from?
- Bambara (language) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Bambara?
- A machine transcription gives /bambəɹə/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Bambara mean?
- In English, A member of a Mandé ethnic group native to much of West Africa.
- In which country does Bambara have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 174 people named Bambara, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bambara.
- Where is Bambara most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bambara is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 525 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Bambara?
- In the United States, the national register counted 174 people named Bambara in 2010, about 1 in 1.9 million residents.
What do you want to know about Bambara?
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/bambaraThe 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, “Bambara”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.