Mabena
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Mabena is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 1.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- TZTanzania≈1 in 11K
- ZWZimbabwe≈1 in 15K
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.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 51 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈36,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
South Africa, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mabena 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | #135 | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Mabena | 51 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈5,200 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Mabena | 18 |
| ZW Zimbabwe | — | ≈990 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Mabena | 7 |
| ZM Zambia | — | ≈530 est. | ≈1 in 33K | — | Mabena | 5 |
| IN India | — | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 3.9M | — | Mabena | 3 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈40 est. | ≈1 in 1.6M | 49 | Mabena | 42 |
| PL Poland | — | 7 | 1 in 5.5M | 5 | Mabena | 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: Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Ndumiso Mabenab. 1987ZAfootball player
- Siyabonga Mabenab. 2007ZASouth African soccer player (born 2007)
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 4 sources across 2 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 49 | #51,457 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 5 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 5 | #201,227 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #356,289 |
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
- In which country does Mabena have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 36 thousand people named Mabena in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mabena.
- How common is the name Mabena?
- In Poland, the national register counted 7 people named Mabena in 2026, about 1 in 5.5 million residents.
- How common is Mabena compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Mabena is the 135th most common surname of 285,788 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mabena?
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/mabenaThe 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, “Mabena” — the 135th most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.