Nhlapo
surname · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 5 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/nhlapo/(machine-generated) Swahili · model-generated · uncertain
Nhlapo is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 1.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 2.8M
- USUnited States≈1 in 20Mfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). 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.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 65 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈53,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: 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)Nhlapo 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 | #106 | ≈53,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Nhlapo | 65 |
| US United States | — | ≈17 est. | ≈1 in 20M | listed | Nhlapo | 38 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈10 est. | ≈1 in 6.7M | 8 | Nhlapo | 18 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈6 est. | ≈1 in 4.8M | — | Nhlapo | 14 |
| LS Lesotho | — | ≈5 est. | ≈1 in 482K | 2 | Nhlapo | 6 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 3 | 1 in 2.8M | 3 | — | 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: the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Lesotho IEC 2022 National Assembly candidate lists; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (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)- Tumelo Nhlapob. 1988ZAAssociation footballer
- Zanele Portia Nhlaphob. 1991ZAnot in their usual nameSouth African association football player
- Mbongeni Nhlapoactor
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)5 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 8 | #167,220 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 3 | #154,370 |
| LS Lesotho | Lesotho IEC 2022 National Assembly candidate lists | 2022 | 2 | #12 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you pronounce Nhlapo?
- In Swahili /nhlapo/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- In which country does Nhlapo have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 53 thousand people named Nhlapo in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nhlapo.
- How common is the name Nhlapo?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 3 people named Nhlapo in 2024, about 1 in 2.8 million residents.
- How common is Nhlapo compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Nhlapo is the 106th most common surname of 285,788 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nhlapo?
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/nhlapoThe 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, “Nhlapo” — the 106th most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.