Popo
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Popo is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country. Recorded meaning: bat, sleeps in the daytime.
- USUnited States1 in 1.7M(measured from records)
- DMDominica1 in 2.2K
- COColombia≈1 in 61K
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 112 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,900 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Dominica
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)
bat, sleeps in the daytime
Sources 1
- Whats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Popo 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 112K | listed | Popo | 19 |
| CO Colombia | ≈810 est. | ≈1 in 61K | 1 | Popo | 39 |
| TZ Tanzania | ≈720 est. | ≈1 in 81K | — | Popo | 7 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈600 est. | ≈1 in 94K | — | Popo | 15 |
| FR France | ≈540 est. | ≈1 in 127K | 16 | — | 2 |
| US United States | 200 | 1 in 1.7M | 265 | Popo | 112 |
| DM Dominica | 34 | 1 in 2.2K | 34 | — | 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; the co-datosgov-candidates register; Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Popo 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.
Butterfly.
as a nameThe African book of names
In men, v., to carry on the back, as a child ; intr. v., to be swift, to be saved. Miningo popo va. Ti po- pongo hama wu va
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In Dutch, synonym of politie (“police”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In izh, synonym of kenkä (“shoe”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Tongan, (of wood) rotten, decaying; (of palm of hand or sole of foot) be affected with a disease which makes it dry and cracked; (of clothes) old and worn out
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)
- Werik Popób. 2001BRBrazilian footballer
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 22 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 265 | #77,921 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 200 | #91,981 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 164 | #101,654 |
| DM Dominica | Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025 | 2025 | 34 | #193 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 16 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 12 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 10 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 8 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 6 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 6 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 6 | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 1 | #115 |
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 Popo mean, and where does it come from?
- bat, sleeps in the daytime Recorded by Whats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names.
- In which country does Popo have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.9 thousand people named Popo in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled popo.
- Where is Popo most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Popo is densest in Dominica — about 1 in 2.2 thousand people — even though Nigeria holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Popo?
- In the United States, the national register counted 200 people named Popo in 2010, about 1 in 1.7 million residents.
What do you want to know about Popo?
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/popoThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Popo”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.