Bonze

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in French: bonze, Buddhist priest (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 3 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026

/bõz/(machine-generated) Portuguese · model-generated · uncertain

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Bonze is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country: 343 people, counted by IBGE.

  • BRBrazil1 in 617K(measured from records)
  • PLPoland1 in 6.4M
  • ARArgentina≈1 in 20Mfew records

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.

Brazil (measured from records)

343 people

Record sources
34 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 617K (inferred from the name graph)

Brazil

measured from records inferred from the name graph

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How to pronounce Bonze

  • Portuguese:/bõz/(machine-generated) model-generated
  • French:/bɔ̃z/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary

Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

A Buddhist monk or priest in East Asia.

Cited for this meaning 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

How Bonze is read

(measured from records)

Bonze is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • Portuguese59%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Bonze in Portuguese.

  • French13%

    bonze, Buddhist priest

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

  • English13%

    A Buddhist monk or priest in East Asia.

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

  • German6.5%

    bonze (Buddhist priest in Japan)

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

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where the surname Bonze is found

(measured from records)

Bonze 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.

Where Bonze is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil3431 in 617K343Bonze34
US United States≈8 est.≈1 in 42M—Bonze4
PL Poland61 in 6.4M4——
AR Argentina≈2 est.≈1 in 20M—Bonze7
NL Netherlands——9——

343 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)

Bonze is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France

    Also written Bonzé, Bónzé

  • German surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany

    Also written Bonzé, Bönze, Boenze

20 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)

Bonze 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 Catalan, bonze (Buddhist monk)

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

  • In cdo, light-headed, dizzy

    as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect

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.

How to address them

(machine-generated)
FormalPrezado(a) Bonze,Dear Bonze, (English)
InformalPrezado(a) Bonze,Hello, (English)

Evidence

(measured from records)

6 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 3 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the name Bonze come from?
A Buddhist monk or priest in East Asia. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Bonze?
It depends on the language: in Portuguese /bõz/; in French /bɔ̃z/ (Wiktionary). Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
What does the name Bonze mean?
In French, bonze, Buddhist priest
Which countries have the most people with the surname Bonze?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 343 people named Bonze, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bonze. After it come United States, Poland and Argentina; the country table on this page ranks them.
Where is Bonze most common?
Bonze is densest in Brazil, where the national register counts about 1 in 617 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Bonze?
In Brazil, the national register counted 343 people named Bonze, about 1 in 617 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Bonze?

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/bonze

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, “Bonze” — ranked 23662nd in Brazil (IBGE). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Bonze parses inside a full name →