Ndungu
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/nduŋɡu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ndungu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Kenya than in any other country.
- KEKenya≈1 in 751(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 679K
- MMMyanmar (Burma)≈1 in 1.2K
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
- 164 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 751 (inferred from the name graph)
≈71,000 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
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)
Ndungu 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 | #115 | ≈71,000 est. | ≈1 in 751 | 4 | Ndungu | 94 |
| MM Myanmar (Burma) | #726 | ≈46,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Ndungu | 1 |
| US United States | — | 490 | 1 in 679K | 857 | Ndungu | 164 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 192K | — | Ndungu | 9 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 306K | — | Ndungu | 16 |
| FI Finland | — | 39 | 1 in 143K | 39 | — | 1 |
| GA Gabon | — | ≈21 est. | ≈1 in 108K | 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: Mzalendo Trust "Elections Watch" — 2022 gazetted election winners; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Ministere de l'Interieur — 2025 candidate lists (local + legislative). 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)
Ndungu 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 kmb, Pimenta
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Geoffrey Ndungub. 1984KEKenyan long distance runner
- Samuel Ndungu Wanjikub. 1988KEKenyan long-distance runner
- Francis M. NdunguGBresearcher
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 20 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 857 | #29,392 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 490 | #43,969 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 120 | #130,443 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 39 | #28,349 |
| KE Kenya | Mzalendo Trust "Elections Watch" — 2022 gazetted election winners | 2022 | 4 | #39 |
| GA Gabon | Ministere de l'Interieur — 2025 candidate lists (local + legislative) | 2025 | 1 | #94 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- How do you pronounce Ndungu?
- A machine transcription gives /nduŋɡu/ (IPA) for Swahili.
- In which country does Ndungu have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 71 thousand people named Ndungu in Kenya, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ndungu.
- How common is the name Ndungu?
- In the United States, the national register counted 490 people named Ndungu in 2010, about 1 in 679 thousand residents.
- How common is Ndungu compared with other names?
- In Kenya, Ndungu is the 115th most common surname of 179,147 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ndungu?
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/ndunguThe 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, “Ndungu” — the 115th most common surname in Kenya. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.