Banda
loc · Latin script
Meaning: islands, sea. Pacific; lang., Africa (Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 34 countries · latest register: ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections, 2021
Banda is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in Indonesia. Banda is also written Μπανδα in Greek.
- IDIndonesia
- PEPeru
- MYMalaysia
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. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Indonesia (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 261 (measured from records)
no count published
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Banda in other scripts: Greek
(measured from records)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)islands, sea. Pacific; lang., Africa
Cited for this meaning 1
- Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Banda counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
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: Zambia top-100 surnames (surnam.es); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset). 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)Banda 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 Romanian, , stegar (Sur XXV).
as a nameDictionar Onomastic Rominesc
In lua, to accuse falsely, blame or lay blame on falsely, injure, slander, defame, traduce, be traitor to, be treacherous toward, vilify, bear false witness against, calumniate. Wakumbanda buibi, he accused me (falsely) of stealing.
as a wordGrammar and Dictionary of the Buluba-Lulua Language
In Basque, ( S; Foix ap. Lh .) Ref.: Alth Bot ; A . "Lavande" Alth Bot 10. "Espliego" A .
as a wordOrotariko Euskal Hiztegia (OEH) — General/Historical Basque Dictionary, Euskaltzaindia
In English, A style of Mexican brass band music, emerged in the 19th century.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Romanian, definite nominative/accusative singular of bandă
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)- Hastings Bandab. 1898MWFirst president of Malawi
- Rupiah Bandab. 1937ZM4th president of Zambia (2008–2011); 1937–2022
- Joyce Bandab. 1950MW4th President of Malawi
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)53 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 34 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Banda mean, and where does it come from?
- islands, sea. Pacific; lang., Africa Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
- In which country does Banda have the most bearers?
- Banda is most frequently recorded in Indonesia, where it is most often spelled banda.
What do you want to know about Banda?
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/bandaThe 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, “Banda”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.