Tolu

surname · Latin script

Meaning: The resinous secretion of Myroxylon balsamum, used in cough syrups and perfumery

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Tolu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • NGNigeria≈1 in 34K(inferred from the name graph)
  • TRTürkiye≈1 in 20K
  • ITItaly≈1 in 54K

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)

≈6,200 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
190 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 20K (inferred from the name graph)

Türkiye, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

ToluLatin(measured from records)
ቶሉEthiopic(measured from records)

Locally spelled ቶሉ in ET Ethiopia.

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)

The resinous secretion of Myroxylon balsamum, used in cough syrups and perfumery.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world(measured from records)

Tolu 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 Tolu is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NG Nigeria≈6,200 est.≈1 in 34K—Tolu83
TR Türkiye≈4,100 est.≈1 in 20K—Tolu8
IT Italy≈1,200 est.≈1 in 54KlistedTolu23
ET Ethiopia≈740 est.≈1 in 147K—ቶሉ6
FR France≈260 est.≈1 in 259K37—1
BE Belgium471 in 249K47Tolu3

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: Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); the xinhua-italian-manual register; 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Tolu is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Turkish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, United States, Nigeria, Netherlands

    Also written Tölü

  • Hindi surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Nigeria, Türkiye, United States

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Tolù

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Tölü

40 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)

Tolu 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.

  • In bbn, three

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

  • In mnb, three (form used in counting and prefixed to nouns)

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

  • In wiv, three; we (pl. incl.)

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

  • In wyy, be three, three

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

  • In niu, three, third

    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)

18001850190019502000Giovanni Tolu, b. 1822Anne Pouget-Tolu, b. 1955Mesale Tolu, b. 1984Mina Tolu, b. 1991

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 13 countries.

Official registers attesting Tolu
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)200847#27,283
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)198138—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)199137—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)196136—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)195131—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)197130—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)192114—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)194110—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19319—
IT Italy意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual)———

Reference works 5

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
  • Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)

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 Tolu mean, and where does it come from?
The resinous secretion of Myroxylon balsamum, used in cough syrups and perfumery. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Tolu have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 6.2 thousand people named Tolu in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tolu.
How common is the name Tolu?
In Belgium, the national register counted 47 people named Tolu in 2008, about 1 in 249 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Tolu?

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

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, “Tolu”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Tolu parses inside a full name →