Fatu
given name · Latin script
Meaning: short form used from Fatma
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/fɑtu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Fatu is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country.
- GMGambia≈1 in 4.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- SLSierra Leone≈1 in 6K
- TZTanzania≈1 in 14K
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 Fatu 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.
- Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 19 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,100 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Gambia, 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 Fatou in US United States.
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)
short form used from Fatma
Sources 1
- African Muslim Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Fatu 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TZ Tanzania | ≈4,100 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Fatu | 5 |
| US United States | 2,402as Fatou | 1 in 138K | 2.4K | Fatou | 9 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 100K | listed | Fatu | 3 |
| ES Spain | 1,819as Fatou | 1 in 27K | 1.8K | Fatu | 4 |
| SL Sierra Leone | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 6K | 2 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | 568as Fatou | 1 in 18K | 568 | — | — |
| GM Gambia | ≈440 est. | ≈1 in 4.9K | 3 | — | — |
| GY Guyana | 1 | 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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 2022; NEC/ECSL — 2018 Local Council, Chairperson and Mayor nominated candidates; 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)
Fatu 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 poz-pol-pro, stone
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Samoan, make something up, assemble something with the hands
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In ang, nominative/accusative plural of fæt
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In vo, predicative singular of fat
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, ablative singular of fātus
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)
- Fatu Feu'ub. 1946WSSamoan artist, painter and lithographer (born 1946)
- Fatu Gayflorb. 1966LRLiberian musician
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 28 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 206 | #95,069 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 178 | #101,247 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 141 | #114,852 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 81 | #32,109 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 81 | #31,848 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 9 | #42,461 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 Fatu mean, and where does it come from?
- short form used from Fatma Recorded by African Muslim Names.
- How do you pronounce Fatu?
- A machine transcription gives /fɑtu/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Fatu a male or female name?
- Fatu 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 Fatu have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.1 thousand people named Fatu in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fatu.
- How common is the name Fatu?
- In Guyana, the national register counted 1 people named Fatu in 2025, about 1 in 750 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Fatu?
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/fatuThe 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, “Fatu”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.