Bening
surname · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 10 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/bẽĩɡ/(machine-generated) Portuguese · model-generated
Bening is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 98K(inferred from the name graph)
- NLNetherlands1 in 184K
- BRBrazil1 in 590K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). 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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 130 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 98K (inferred from the name graph)
≈850 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Bening 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | ≈850 est. | ≈1 in 98K | — | Bening | 62 |
| BR Brazil | 359 | 1 in 590K | 359 | — | — |
| US United States | 241 | 1 in 1.4M | 247 | Bening | 130 |
| GH Ghana | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 328K | — | Bening | 12 |
| NL Netherlands | 94 | 1 in 184K | 94 | Bening | 9 |
| BZ Belize | ≈3 est. | ≈1 in 123K | — | Bening | 1 |
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 2000; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). 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)Bening 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 frm, benign; good-doing
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)- Alexander Beningb. 1444BEFlemish manuscript illuminator (c.1444-1519)
- Simon Beningb. 1483BEFlemish painter and manuscript illuminator (1483-1561)
- Annette Beningb. 1958USAmerican actress (born 1958)
- Ahmed BeningGHGhanaian youth leader
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)19 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 359 | #22,761 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 247 | #73,154 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 241 | #79,075 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 228 | #87,624 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 94 | #19,918 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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
- How do you pronounce Bening?
- It depends on the language: in Portuguese /bẽĩɡ/; in Indonesian /bənˈiŋ/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- In which country does Bening have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 849 people named Bening in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bening.
- How common is the name Bening?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 359 people named Bening, about 1 in 590 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Bening?
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/beningThe 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, “Bening”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.