Mbalu
surname · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries · latest register: Mzalendo Trust "Elections Watch", 2022
/mbɑlu/(machine-generated) Swahili · model-generated
Mbalu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Congo - Kinshasa than in any other country.
- KEKenya≈1 in 60Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- TZTanzania≈1 in 90Kfew records
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 240Kfew records
carrying the name, as Mondonomo estimates it from our sources: no national register counts it in these countries. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Congo - Kinshasa (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 44 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 60K (inferred from the name graph)
≈970 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Kenya, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
How to pronounce Mbalu
- Swahili:/mbɑlu/(machine-generated) model-generated
Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Where the surname Mbalu is found
(measured from records)Mbalu 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | — | ≈970 est. | ≈1 in 112K | — | Mbalu | 2 |
| KE Kenya | — | ≈930 est. | ≈1 in 60K | 2 | Mbalu | 21 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈760 est. | ≈1 in 90K | — | Mbalu | 9 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 612K | — | Mbalu | 10 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 237K | — | Mbalu | 11 |
| MW Malawi | #600 | ≈43 est. | ≈1 in 505K | — | Mbalu | 4 |
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: Mzalendo Trust "Elections Watch" — 2022 gazetted election winners. 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)Mbalu 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 men, A black bird with a yellow band on the back of neck, .size of a sparrow
as a wordMende Natural History Vocabulary
In men, mauve underneath. Pods con- tain a sort of small cotton
as a wordMende Natural History Vocabulary
In nlg, any, some, other; another
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In men, cane rope
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In kmb, Ripa
as a wordDiccionario Portuguez-Kimbundu
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)5 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 4 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you pronounce Mbalu?
- In Swahili /mbɑlu/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Mbalu?
- Mondonomo estimates about 973 people named Mbalu in Congo - Kinshasa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mbalu. After it come Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria and South Africa; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Mbalu?
- Mondonomo estimates about 970 people in Congo - Kinshasa have Mbalu as their first surname, about 1 in 112 thousand residents. No national register counts it there; the figure is ours, calibrated against the registers that do.
- How common is Mbalu compared with other names?
- In Malawi, Mbalu is the 600th most common surname of 6,972 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mbalu?
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/mbaluThe 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, “Mbalu” — the 600th most common surname in Malawi. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.