Kazembe
surname · Latin script
Meaning: a traditional kingdom in modern-day Zambia and southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo; the most organized of the Luba kingdoms
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kazembe is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malawi than in any other country, where it is the 12th most common surname.
- MWMalawi≈1 in 1.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- ZMZambia≈1 in 3.9K
- ZWZimbabwe≈1 in 7.4K
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.
- Malawi (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 35 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈14,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Malawi, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
a traditional kingdom in modern-day Zambia and southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo; the most organized of the Luba kingdoms
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kazembe 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MW Malawi | #12 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 3 | Kazembe | 19 |
| ZM Zambia | #100 | ≈4,500 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | 1 | Kazembe | 19 |
| TZ Tanzania | #648 | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Kazembe | 17 |
| ZW Zimbabwe | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.4K | listed | Kazembe | 11 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | — | ≈690 est. | ≈1 in 148K | 1 | Kazembe | 8 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈600 est. | ≈1 in 95K | — | Kazembe | 13 |
| NO Norway | — | 16 | 1 in 342K | 16 | — | 3 |
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: ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections — candidate results; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Raphael Kazembeb. 1947MWMalawian cyclist
- Eunice Kazembeb. 1952MWMalawian politician (1952-2013)
- Peter Kazembeb. 1955MWMalawian pediatrician
- Pamphile Mihayo Kazembeb. 1976CDDemocratic Republic of the Congo footballer
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 13 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 16 | #46,630 |
| MW Malawi | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 3 | #7 |
| ZM Zambia | ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections — candidate results | 2021 | 1 | #42 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 1 | #237 |
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 Kazembe mean, and where does it come from?
- a traditional kingdom in modern-day Zambia and southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo; the most organized of the Luba kingdoms Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Kazembe have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 14 thousand people named Kazembe in Malawi, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kazembe.
- How common is the name Kazembe?
- In Norway, the national register counted 16 people named Kazembe, about 1 in 342 thousand residents.
- How common is Kazembe compared with other names?
- In Malawi, Kazembe is the 12th most common surname of 6,972 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kazembe?
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/kazembeThe 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, “Kazembe” — the 12th most common surname in Malawi. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.