Kungu
surname · Latin script
Meaning: The fruit of the Indian almond tree, Terminalia catappa
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kuᵑgu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kungu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Kenya than in any other country.
- KEKenya≈1 in 5.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- TZTanzania≈1 in 56K
- PGPapua New Guinea≈1 in 97K
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.
- Kenya (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 104 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈9,800 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Kenya, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
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)
The fruit of the Indian almond tree, Terminalia catappa.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kungu 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KE Kenya | #602 | ≈9,800 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | — | Kungu | 56 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 56K | 1 | Kungu | 13 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | — | ≈390 est. | ≈1 in 263K | — | Kungu | 2 |
| US United States | — | 153 | 1 in 2.2M | 250 | Kungu | 104 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 1.9M | — | Kungu | 4 |
| PG Papua New Guinea | — | ≈75 est. | ≈1 in 97K | 3 | — | — |
| QA Qatar | — | ≈10 est. | ≈1 in 253K | — | Kungu | 2 |
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 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results; PNG Election Results Database — candidate names (1972–2022). 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)
Kungu 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.
In Latvian, pilsēta Majotas salā, 6700 iedzīvotāju (2007. g.)
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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.
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 8 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 250 | #81,574 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 153 | #114,424 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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 Kungu mean, and where does it come from?
- The fruit of the Indian almond tree, Terminalia catappa. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Kungu?
- A machine transcription gives /kuᵑgu/ (IPA) for Swahili.
- In which country does Kungu have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 9.8 thousand people named Kungu in Kenya, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kungu.
- How common is the name Kungu?
- In the United States, the national register counted 153 people named Kungu in 2010, about 1 in 2.2 million residents.
- How common is Kungu compared with other names?
- In Kenya, Kungu is the 602nd most common surname of 179,147 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kungu?
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/kunguThe 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, “Kungu” — the 602nd most common surname in Kenya. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.