Jelani
given name · Latin script
Meaning: name; often interpreted as "mighty" in Swahili usage
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dʒɫɑni/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jelani is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Myanmar (Burma) than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 85K(measured from records)
- MMMyanmar (Burma)≈1 in 328
- GYGuyana1 in 63K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Myanmar (Burma) (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 294 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 328 (inferred from the name graph)
≈170,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Myanmar (Burma), est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
name; often interpreted as "mighty" in Swahili usage
Sources 1
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jelani 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MM Myanmar (Burma) | #373 | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 328 | — | Jelani | 1 |
| US United States | — | 3,900 | 1 in 85K | 3.5K | Jelani | 294 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 193K | — | Jelani | 21 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 168K | — | Jelani | 26 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 178 | 1 in 97K | 159 | Jelani | 12 |
| GY Guyana | — | 12 | 1 in 63K | 12 | — | 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; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); 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)
Jelani is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
great
as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names
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)
- Jelani Cobbb. 1967USAmerican journalist and professor of journalism
- Jelani McCoyb. 1977USAmerican basketball player (born 1977)
- Jelani Janisseb. 1977USAmerican basketball player
- Jelani Nelsonb. 1984USAmerican computer scientist
- Jelani Smithb. 1991CAassociation football player
- Jelani Alladinb. 1992USAmerican actor
- Marcus Thorntonb. 1992USnot in their usual nameAmerican basketball player (born 1992)
- Jelani Petersb. 1993CACanadian soccer player
- Jelani Reshaun Sumiyoshib. 1997JPJapanese association football player
- Jelani Seedorfb. 2004NLDutch association football 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)
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 39 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 127 | #136,807 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 107 | #152,628 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 9 | #66,675 |
| 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
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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 Jelani mean, and where does it come from?
- name; often interpreted as "mighty" in Swahili usage Recorded by Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular….
- How do you pronounce Jelani?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒɫɑni/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Jelani have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 173 thousand people named Jelani in Myanmar (Burma), more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jelani.
- Is Jelani a male or female name?
- Jelani is a male 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.
- How common is the name Jelani?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,900 people named Jelani in 2020, about 1 in 85 thousand residents.
- How common is Jelani compared with other names?
- In Myanmar (Burma), Jelani is the 373rd most common given name of 9,528 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jelani?
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/jelaniThe 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, “Jelani” — the 373rd most common given name in Myanmar (Burma). Data snapshot 2026-10-10.