Buku
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Alternative spelling of beaucoup (lots, a large amount)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/bəku/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Buku is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.
- INIndia1 in 41M(measured from records)
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- India (measured from records)
- Sources
- 9 (measured from records)
- 1 in 41M (inferred from the name graph)
32 people
Highest-authority source
India
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
book (collection of sheets of paper bound together containing printed or written material)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
How Buku is read(measured from records)
Buku is one spelling over 3 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.
- English35%
Alternative spelling of beaucoup (lots, a large amount)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Indonesian27%
book (collection of sheets of paper bound together containing printed or written material)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Swahili17%
book
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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 in the world(measured from records)
Buku 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | 32 | 1 in 41M | 32 | Buku | 9 |
| US United States | — | — | listed | Buku | 2 |
| PG Papua New Guinea | — | — | 2 | — | 1 |
32 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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; the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; PNG Election Results Database — candidate names (1972–2022). 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)
Buku is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In lua, the state or condition of being a mother-in-law or father-in-law.
as a wordGrammar and Dictionary of the Buluba-Lulua Language
In zlm, knuckle; knot; hard, lumpy joint; a measure for raw opium, i.e. 'a ball'; (fig.) the kernel, gist or sting of a remark; the pith or substance of anything; fig., of coming up against the hard joint instead of the soft core of anything
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In mak, bone
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)
- Buku Khamisb. 2000AUAustralian football league player
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)
Attested in 6 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 34 | #10,430 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 32 | #59,661 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 12 | #111,065 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 3 | #193,690 |
| PG Papua New Guinea | PNG Election Results Database — candidate names (1972–2022) | — | 2 | #34 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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
- Where does the name Buku come from?
- book (collection of sheets of paper bound together containing printed or written material) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Buku?
- A machine transcription gives /bəku/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Buku mean?
- In English, Alternative spelling of beaucoup (lots, a large amount)
- In which country does Buku have the most bearers?
- In India, the national register counted about 32 people named Buku, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled buku.
- Where is Buku most common?
- Buku is densest in India, where the national register counts about 1 in 41 million people carrying it.
- How common is the name Buku?
- In India, the national register counted 32 people named Buku, about 1 in 41 million residents.
What do you want to know about Buku?
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/bukuThe 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, “Buku”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.