Obama

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: An African surname from Luo

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/oʊbɑmə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Obama is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country. In Equatorial Guinea it is the 9th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • ESSpain1 in 90K(measured from records)
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 700K
  • USUnited States1 in 2.1M

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Spain (measured from records)

554 people

Sources
104 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 90K (inferred from the name graph)

Spain

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

An African surname from Luo.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

How Obama is read(measured from records)

Obama is one spelling over 5 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.

  • English55%

    An African surname from Luo.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Polish12%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Obama in Polish.

  • Swahili7.8%

    a surname from Luo

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Spanish7.7%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Obama in Spanish.

  • French6.0%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Obama in French.

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Obama 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.

Where Obama is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ES Spain—5541 in 90K554Obama50
US United States—1591 in 2.1M159Obama53
BR Brazil—361 in 5.9M36——
CH Switzerland—121 in 700K12—1
BE Belgium—21 in 5.9M2Obama7
GQ Equatorial Guinea#9——110Obama20

554 people counted by INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; This page provides a list of common names and surnames in Equatorial Guinea.; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); 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).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Obama is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Polish surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, Spain, Czechia, United States

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Croatian

    Also written Обама

44 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Obama is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Serbo-Croatian, masculine/neuter dative/locative/instrumental of ȍba

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In German, the 44ᵗʰ president of the USA; Obama

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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)

192019401960198020002020Barack Obama, b. 1934Francisco Pascual Obama Asue, b. 1949Malik Obama, b. 1958Auma Obama, b. 1960Barack Obama, b. 1961Ricardo Mangue Obama Nfubea, b. 1961Michelle Obama, b. 1964Bernard Obama, b. 1970Malia Obama, b. 1998Sasha Obama, b. 2001

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 23 sources across 18 countries.

Official registers attesting Obama
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—554#7,363
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—554#7,356
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010159#110,825
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020129#135,344
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—36#131,575
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202412#53,184
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)20082#140,122
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • 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

What does the name Obama mean, and where does it come from?
An African surname from Luo. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Obama?
A machine transcription gives /oʊbɑmə/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Obama have the most bearers?
In Spain, the national register counted about 554 people named Obama, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled obama.
Where is Obama most common?
Obama is densest in Spain, where the national register counts about 1 in 90 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Obama?
In Spain, the national register counted 554 people named Obama, about 1 in 90 thousand residents.
How common is Obama compared with other names?
In Equatorial Guinea, Obama is the 9th most common surname of 237 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Obama?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/obama

The 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, “Obama” — the 9th most common surname in Equatorial Guinea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Obama parses inside a full name →