Bonny
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Latin-origin female name meaning “pretty”; also a Nigerian coastal city
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Bonny is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 1.5Kas Bonnie(measured from records)
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 14K
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 22K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Bonny itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 351 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
219,134 named Bonnie, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Bonnie in KP North Korea.
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)
Latin-origin female name meaning “pretty”; also a Nigerian coastal city.
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bonny 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 219,134as Bonnie | 1 in 1.5K | 218K | Bonny | 351 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 50K | listed | Bonny | 33 |
| SE Sweden | — | 2,665as Bonnie | 1 in 3.8K | 2.7K | Bonny | 22 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Bonny | 30 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 51K | listed | Bonny | 15 |
| HK Hong Kong | — | ≈520 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Bonny | 21 |
| DK Denmark | — | 489as Bonnie | 1 in 12K | 485 | Bonny | 16 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 453 | 1 in 38K | 681 | Bonny | 37 |
| KP North Korea | #149 | ≈330 est. | ≈1 in 78K | — | Bonnie | 2 |
219,134 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling bonnie. 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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); the african-names-stewart-1993 register; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Bonny is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Alternative spelling of bonnie (“attractive”).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, fine, pretty; see Bonita
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
pretty.
as a nameAfrican Names
In sco, handsome; beautiful; pretty; attractively lively and graceful
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)
- Bonny Jean Godfreyb. 19301930 - 2008
- Mack Riceb. 1933USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer, songwriter and producer
- Bonny L. Schumakerb. 1953USAmerican physicist and pilot
- Bonny Barryb. 1960AUAustralian politician
- Bonny Warnerb. 1962USAmerican luger, bob pilot and pilot
- Bonny Hicksb. 1968SGSingaporean model
- Bonny Bonb. 1976HUHungarian pornographic actress
- Bonny L Speckerb. 2000USresearcher
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 54 sources across 30 countries.
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Bonny mean, and where does it come from?
- Latin-origin female name meaning “pretty”; also a Nigerian coastal city. Recorded by African Names.
- Is Bonny a male or female name?
- Bonny is a female 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 are other forms of the name Bonny?
- In the etymology graph, Bonnie is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Bonny have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 219 thousand people named Bonnie, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Bonny?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 453 people named Bonny, about 1 in 38 thousand residents.
- How common is Bonny compared with other names?
- In North Korea, Bonny is the 149th most common given name of 2,746 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bonny?
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/bonnyThe 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, “Bonny” — the 149th most common given name in North Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.