Ulu
loc · Latin script
Meaning: dated spelling of hulu (“upriver; head”)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 10 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Ulu is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Bangladesh than in any other country.
- BEBelgium1 in 225K(measured from records)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 336K
- NONorway1 in 19Kas Waal
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Ulu itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Bangladesh (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 130 (measured from records)
- 1 in 225K (inferred from the name graph)
≈32,000 named Ul, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Belgium
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Ul in US United States, PK Pakistan, উল in BD Bangladesh and Úl in CO Colombia.
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)dated spelling of hulu (“upriver; head”)
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Ulu is found
(measured from records)Ulu 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BD Bangladesh | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.4K | — | উল | 90 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈4,900 est. | ≈1 in 51K | listed | Ul | 130 |
| US United States | 817as Wool | 1 in 407K | 884 | Ul | 123 |
| CO Colombia | ≈770 est. | ≈1 in 68K | — | Úl | 31 |
| NL Netherlands | 384as Waal | 1 in 45K | 384 | — | 11 |
| NO Norway | 292as Waal | 1 in 19K | 292 | — | 9 |
| BE Belgium | 52 | 1 in 225K | 52 | — | 10 |
| SI Slovenia | 39as Ul | 1 in 54K | 1.7K | — | 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: stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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)Ulu 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 Igbo, Ibo (Nigeria): second-born female
as a nameAfrican Names
In Yoruba, alternative form of ìlù (“drum, percussion”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In mak, head
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Samoan, go into, enter; of a team, contest or competition, to enter (i.e. pay an entrance deposit)
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In iba, hilt, handle (as of sword, paddle, knife); upper part of river basin, headwaters
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)- Ulu Grosbardb. 1929USTheatre & film director (1929-2012)
- Ulu Braunb. 1976DEGerman artist and filmmaker
- Murat Ulub. 1995TRTurkish association football player (born 1995)
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)20 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 10 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Ulu mean, and where does it come from?
- dated spelling of hulu (“upriver; head”) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Ulu?
- Mondonomo estimates about 32 thousand people named Ul in Bangladesh, more than in any other country we hold. After it come Pakistan, United States, Colombia and Netherlands; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Ulu most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ulu is densest in Belgium — about 1 in 225 thousand people — even though Bangladesh holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Ulu?
- In Belgium, the national register counted 52 people named Ulu in 2008, about 1 in 225 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Ulu?
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/uluThe 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, “Ulu”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.