Sowe
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Obsolete spelling of sow
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/soʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sowe is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Gambia than in any other country, where it is the 13th most common surname.
- USUnited States1 in 1.4M(measured from records)
- GMGambia≈1 in 140
- SNSenegal≈1 in 23K
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.
- Gambia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 118 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 140 (inferred from the name graph)
≈15,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Gambia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Obsolete spelling of sow.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sowe 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GM Gambia | #13 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 140 | 5 | Sowe | 58 |
| CN China | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 969K | — | Sowe | 2 |
| SN Senegal | — | ≈680 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Sowe | 4 |
| ES Spain | — | 484 | 1 in 103K | 484 | Sowe | 25 |
| US United States | — | 245 | 1 in 1.4M | 398 | Sowe | 118 |
| SE Sweden | — | 181 | 1 in 56K | 181 | Sowe | 18 |
| LY Libya | — | ≈74 est. | ≈1 in 93K | — | Sowe | 2 |
| NO Norway | — | 72 | 1 in 76K | 72 | Sowe | 13 |
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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 2022; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Sowe 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 enm, A sow; a female pig.
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)
- Babou Soweb. 1935GMGambian association football manager
- Ousman Soweb. 1972GMGambian Politician
- Fatou Soweb. 1993GMGambian athletics competitor
- Ali Soweb. 1994GMGambian footballer
- Mousa Balla Soweb. 1997GMGambian footballer
- Omar Soweb. 2000GMGambian-American soccer player
- Fatou SoweGMpolitician from Gambia
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 25 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 484 | #8,237 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 484 | #8,221 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 398 | #55,632 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 245 | #78,040 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 181 | #4,532 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 131 | #121,780 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 72 | #20,223 |
| GM Gambia | IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 2022 | 2022 | 5 | #7 |
| GM Gambia | IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 2022 | 2022 | 2 | #1 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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
- What does the name Sowe mean, and where does it come from?
- Obsolete spelling of sow. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Sowe?
- In the etymology graph, Sow is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Sowe?
- A machine transcription gives /soʊ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Sowe have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 15 thousand people named Sowe in the Gambia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sowe.
- How common is the name Sowe?
- In Spain, the national register counted 484 people named Sowe, about 1 in 103 thousand residents.
- How common is Sowe compared with other names?
- In the Gambia, Sowe is the 13th most common surname of 178 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sowe?
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/soweThe 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, “Sowe” — the 13th most common surname in Gambia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.