Banga

loc · Latin script

Meaning: Sharp as a knife

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

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

rarermore common
  • INIndia

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

Sources
162 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Sharp as a knife

Sources 1

  • The book of African names

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

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

Where Banga is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India—1.4KBanga136
US United States—657—162
CI Côte d’Ivoire—367——
NL Netherlands—300—9
AR Argentina—129——

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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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)

Banga is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, Canada, United States

    Also written Bang-A, Ban-Ga, Bäñgä, Bângâ, Bañga

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Baṅgā, Bāṅgā, Baṅga

  • Portuguese surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines

    Also written Bang-A, Bañga, Bãngã

  • French name7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France

    Also written Bãnga, Bânga, Bãngã, Bànga, Bañga

  • Indonesian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Banga'

  • Bangla surname13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Bangladesh, India

    Also written Bengal, Vanga, বঙ্গ, Bango, Bongo

  • Arabic name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Egypt

    Also written Bañgâ

48 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)

Banga 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 lua, to commence or start or begin to do; hence to be betrothed to or engaged to or espoused to. In betrothal the active forms oj this verb refer to the man, the passive to the woman.

    as a wordGrammar and Dictionary of the Buluba-Lulua Language

  • In Hausa, A small, bowl-shaped drum, played with fingers.

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

  • In English, A barangay of Wao, Lanao del Sur, Philippines.

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

  • In Zulu, to cause, to make, to produce, to bring about

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

  • In Swedish, to pass on (something) (decline or skip)

    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)

175018001850190019502000Jelle Banga, b. 1786Benedikt Banga, b. 1802Tija Banga, b. 1882Ilona Banga, b. 1906Ferenc Banga, b. 1947Boris Banga, b. 1949Ajaypal Singh Banga, b. 1959Radoslav Banga, b. 1982Patrik Banga, b. 1982

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 35 sources across 23 countries.

Official registers attesting Banga
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—1.4K#4,163
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—1.1K#720
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020657#36,629
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010444#47,706
CI Côte d’Ivoirenomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies—367#1,288
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)2007300#6,868
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000256#71,143
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—129—
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)

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 Banga mean, and where does it come from?
Sharp as a knife Recorded by The book of African names.
In which country does Banga have the most bearers?
Banga is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled banga.

What do you want to know about Banga?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/banga

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, “Banga”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Banga parses inside a full name →