Bongani
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Sing with joy
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/bɔŋɑni/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bongani is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country, where it is the 22nd most common given name.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 413(inferred from the name graph)
- SZEswatini≈1 in 734
- ZWZimbabwe≈1 in 2.9K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 92 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 413 (inferred from the name graph)
≈140,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
South Africa, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Sing with joy
Sources 1
- The book of African names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bongani 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | #22 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 413 | — | Bongani | 92 |
| ZW Zimbabwe | #739 | ≈5,100 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | — | Bongani | 21 |
| MW Malawi | — | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Bongani | 6 |
| SZ Eswatini | #2 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 734 | 72 | Bongani | 13 |
| ZM Zambia | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Bongani | 5 |
| BW Botswana | #246 | ≈700 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | — | Bongani | 6 |
| SE Sweden | — | 11 | 1 in 928K | 11 | — | 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: Eswatini EBC 2023 Secondary Elections candidate ballots; 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Bongani is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, aus Südafrika stammender männl.
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Be grateful to God
as a nameThe African book of names
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)
- Bongani Bongob. 1978ZASouth African politician
- Bongani Madondob. 1981ZASouth African actor
- Bongani von Bodensteinb. 1997ZAbadminton player
- Bongani Gumedeactor
- Bongani MajolaZASouth African jurist
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 13 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SZ Eswatini | Eswatini EBC 2023 Secondary Elections candidate ballots | 2023 | 72 | #1 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 11 | #33,403 |
Reference works 1
- 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
- Is Bongani a male or female name?
- Bongani is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Bongani mean, and where does it come from?
- Sing with joy Recorded by The book of African names.
- What are other forms of the name Bongani?
- In the etymology graph, Siyabonga is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Bongani?
- A machine transcription gives /bɔŋɑni/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Bongani have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 137 thousand people named Bongani in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bongani.
- How common is the name Bongani?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 11 people named Bongani, about 1 in 928 thousand residents.
- How common is Bongani compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Bongani is the 22nd most common given name of 189,620 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bongani?
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/bonganiThe 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, “Bongani” — the 22nd most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.