Buli
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Gratitude
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/bəli/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Buli is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Ethiopia than in any other country.
- ETEthiopia≈1 in 17K(inferred from the name graph)
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 112K
- NGNigeria≈1 in 384K
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 Buli 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.
- Ethiopia (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 39 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 17K (inferred from the name graph)
≈6,300 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ethiopia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Gratitude.
Sources 1
- The African book of names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Buli 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ET Ethiopia | ≈6,300 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Buli | 2 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈560 est. | ≈1 in 384K | listed | Buli | 7 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈500 est. | ≈1 in 112K | — | Buli | 7 |
| BD Bangladesh | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 1.1M | — | Buli | 9 |
| BR Brazil | 102as Bili | 1 in 2.1M | 190 | — | — |
| GY Guyana | 1as Bili | 1 in 750K | 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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA); the african-book-names-hodari-2003 register; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Buli is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In fj, cowrie shell
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In rob, a tree with red wood that is very useful in house construction, and bast fiber used to make palm wine bitter and to color it red: Bridelia minutiflora
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In nak, roll across the ground; teeter; roll back and forth; turn over and over; push or roll something too heavy to carry
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In gdd, turn back or into something else; change, transform; turn (over, back, round)
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Hungarian, party (a social gathering of humans for entertainment, fun and socializing)
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)
- Monny de Boullyb. 1904RSnot in their usual nameFrench poet (1904–1968)
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 16 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | The African Book of Names (Hodari, 2003) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
- 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 Buli mean, and where does it come from?
- Gratitude. Recorded by The African book of names.
- How do you pronounce Buli?
- A machine transcription gives /bəli/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Buli a male or female name?
- Buli 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.
- In which country does Buli have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 6.3 thousand people named Buli in Ethiopia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled buli.
- How common is the name Buli?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 102 people named Bili in 2022, about 1 in 2.1 million residents.
What do you want to know about Buli?
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/buliThe 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, “Buli”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.