Mbila
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in French: jake, police
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mbila/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Mbila is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Congo - Kinshasa than in any other country.
- CDCongo - Kinshasa≈1 in 789K(inferred from the name graph)
- BEBelgium1 in 977K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 1.7M
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.
- Congo - Kinshasa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 77 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 789K (inferred from the name graph)
≈130 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Congo - Kinshasa, 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)
In Southern Africa, an instrument similar to the xylophone, played by striking the bars with mallets.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
How Mbila is read(measured from records)
Mbila is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Swahili45%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Mbila in Swahili.
- French33%
jake, police
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English15%
In Southern Africa, an instrument similar to the xylophone, played by striking the bars with mallets.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mbila 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 | #566 | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 789K | — | Mbila | 9 |
| BE Belgium | — | 12 | 1 in 977K | 12 | Mbila | 12 |
| FR France | — | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 9.7M | — | Mbila | 77 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 5 | 1 in 1.7M | 5 | — | 1 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 1 | 1 in 11M | 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: Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); MVČR — living population register 2017. 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)
Mbila is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In nlg, organ of a fish
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In kmb, Sepultura
as a wordDiccionario Portuguez-Kimbundu
In kmb, Morcego
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)
Attested in 6 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 12 | #64,025 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 5 | #101,952 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 1 | #266,860 |
Reference works 1
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
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
- Where does the name Mbila come from?
- In Southern Africa, an instrument similar to the xylophone, played by striking the bars with mallets. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Mbila?
- A machine transcription gives /mbila/ (IPA) for Swahili.
- What does the name Mbila mean?
- In French, jake, police
- In which country does Mbila have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 129 people named Mbila in Congo - Kinshasa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mbila.
- How common is the name Mbila?
- In Belgium, the national register counted 12 people named Mbila in 2008, about 1 in 977 thousand residents.
- How common is Mbila compared with other names?
- In Congo - Kinshasa, Mbila is the 566th most common surname of 44,726 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mbila?
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/mbilaThe 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, “Mbila” — the 566th most common surname in Congo - Kinshasa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.