Sambou
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɑ̃bu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sambou is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Senegal than in any other country, where it is the 41st most common surname.
- SNSenegal≈1 in 745(inferred from the name graph)
- FRFrance≈1 in 115K
- GMGambia≈1 in 629
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.
- Senegal (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 139 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 629 (inferred from the name graph)
≈21,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Gambia, 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.
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sambou 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SN Senegal | #41 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 745 | 11 | Sambou | 38 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | — | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Sambou | 3 |
| GM Gambia | — | ≈3,500 est. | ≈1 in 629 | 1 | — | 1 |
| FR France | — | ≈590 est. | ≈1 in 115K | 55 | Sambou | 139 |
| ML Mali | — | ≈420 est. | ≈1 in 47K | 2 | — | 13 |
| ES Spain | — | 265 | 1 in 189K | 265 | Sambou | 26 |
| GA Gabon | — | ≈21 est. | ≈1 in 108K | 1 | — | 6 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 2022; 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)
Sambou 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 Portuguese, third-person singular preterite indicative of sambar
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)
- Ernest Samboub. 1947SNSenegalese catholic bishop
- Jacques Samboub. 1975SNSenegalese athletics competitor
- Rodolphe Samboub. 1975FRFrench diplomat
- Isabelle Samboub. 1980SNOlympic wrestler
- Massamba Samboub. 1986SNSenegalese footballer
- Sainey Samboub. 1992GMGambian footballer
- Anta Samboub. 1994SNSenegalese amateur wrestler
- Bassala Samboub. 1997DEGerman association football player
- Bouly Samboub. 1998SNSenegalese footballer
- Euphrasie Samboub. 2000SNSenegalese amateur wrestler
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 24 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 265 | #13,320 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 265 | #13,286 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 55 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 29 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 16 | — |
| SN Senegal | DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024) | 2024 | 11 | #60 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 8 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 3 | — |
| GA Gabon | Ministere de l'Interieur — 2025 candidate lists (local + legislative) | 2025 | 1 | #94 |
| GM Gambia | IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 2022 | 2022 | 1 | #11 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 1 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Sambou?
- A machine transcription gives /ɑ̃bu/ (IPA) for French.
- In which country does Sambou have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 21 thousand people named Sambou in Senegal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sambou.
- How common is the name Sambou?
- In Spain, the national register counted 265 people named Sambou, about 1 in 189 thousand residents.
- How common is Sambou compared with other names?
- In Senegal, Sambou is the 41st most common surname of 3,622 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sambou?
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/sambouThe 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, “Sambou” — the 41st most common surname in Senegal. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.