Bana

loc · Latin script

Meaning: name of many men (P)

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

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

Bana is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in India.

rarermore common
  • INIndia
  • PKPakistan
  • USUnited States

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

India (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
110 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

BaniLatin(measured from records)
బైనTelugu(measured from records)

Locally spelled Bani in IN India, PK Pakistan and Ben in US United States.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

name of many men (P)

Sources 1

  • Sunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Bana counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where Bana is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India—1.7KBani110
PK Pakistan——Bani15
US United States—107KBen91
AT Austria—4.2K——
FR France—3.2K—1
SE Sweden—3.2K—3

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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)

Bana is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, Germany, United States, Spain

    Languages: English, German

    Also written Baña, Banã, Bană, Bàñá, Bãna

  • a separate name8 spellings in the group

    Also written Ban̄a, Baňa, Bānā, Báňa, Banā

  • French surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Spain

    Also written Baña, Bānā, Banä, Bàna, Bãnä

  • Indonesian surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia

    Also written Baña

  • a separate name7 spellings in the group

    Also written Bâna, Banã, Bană, Bãna, Baña

62 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)

Bana is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In dag, pronoun, 3rd. person plural, nom. case, those, these

    as a wordDagbani Dictionary CD

  • In Basque, Short form of banatu (“to distribute”).

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

  • In Polish, synonym of kolej (“rail, railway”)

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

  • In Cebuano, husband

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

  • In pmf, formerly the term for all colored cotton, through which all old-fashioned textiles that still are used in religious ceremonies are called _bana_

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

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)

1900195020002050Antal Bana, b. 1928Bana Mustafaevna Gaytukaeva, b. 1959Bana Jabri, b. 1961Eric Bana, b. 1968Tibor Bana, b. 1985Werenoi, b. 1994Bana al-Abed, b. 2009

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 Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 61 sources across 32 countries.

Official registers attesting Bana
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—1K#5,352
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—681#958
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020426#52,580
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010367#55,841
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000298#62,775
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)199162—

Reference works 6

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 Bana mean, and where does it come from?
name of many men (P) Recorded by Sunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names.
How do you pronounce Bana?
A machine transcription gives /bænə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
In which country does Bana have the most bearers?
Bana is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled bani.

What do you want to know about Bana?

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/bana

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, “Bana”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Bana parses inside a full name →