Datu
loc · Latin script
Meaning: king (a male of a royal family who is the supreme ruler of his nation)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Datu is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
king (a male of a royal family who is the supreme ruler of his nation)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Datu counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 490 | — |
| IN India | — | 29 | — |
| ES Spain | — | 10 | — |
| PL Poland | — | 6 | — |
| CH Switzerland | — | 5 | — |
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 — Surname Frequency 2020; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Datu 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 Indonesian, monarch
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In mog, lord, prince, king; in earlier times people hardly dared to use the word _datu_, and generally called the prince _ki tuang_ ‘the lord’
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Filipino, datu (title denoting a ruler of various pre-colonial and modern indigenous peoples of the Philippines)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In btd, function among animists (‘_orang kafir_’) worshipping idols; shaman
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In bbc, shaman, magician, soothsayer, doctor who makes offerings to the spirits, reads the signs in chicken entrails, selects auspicious days, and whose advice is sought in all matters of daily concern
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 15 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 490 | #46,793 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 443 | #47,791 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 306 | #61,376 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 29 | #63,063 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 10 | #120,154 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 10 | #95,564 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 7 | #1,714 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 6 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 6 | #176,640 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 5 | #101,952 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #320,956 |
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
- What does the name Datu mean, and where does it come from?
- king (a male of a royal family who is the supreme ruler of his nation) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Datu have the most bearers?
- Datu is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Datu?
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/datuThe 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, “Datu”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.