Zimu
surname · Latin script
Meaning: spirit country
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/zimu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Zimu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 13K(inferred from the name graph)
- TZTanzania≈1 in 3.7M
- KEKenya≈1 in 4.7M
carrying the name, as Mondonomo estimates it from our sources: no national register counts it in these countries. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 23 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 13K (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,400 people, est.
Highest-authority source
South Africa, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
spirit country
Sources 1
- Bantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003
Where in the world(measured from records)
Zimu 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Zimu | 23 |
| TZ Tanzania | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 3.7M | — | Zimu | 5 |
| KE Kenya | ≈11 est. | ≈1 in 4.7M | — | Zimu | 5 |
| US United States | ≈8 est. | ≈1 in 42M | — | Zimu | 22 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈6 est. | ≈1 in 12M | — | Zimu | 15 |
| AU Australia | ≈1 est. | ≈1 in 24M | 1 | — | 12 |
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: SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present). 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)
Zimu 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 Swahili, spirit
as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003
In goh, first-person singular present indicative of zëman
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Serbo-Croatian, accusative singular of zima
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In tga, fool
as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003
In Xhosa, ogre
as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003
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)
- Rosemary Zimub. 1993South African actress
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 7 sources across 4 countries.
Reference works 1
- 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 Zimu mean, and where does it come from?
- spirit country Recorded by Bantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003.
- How do you pronounce Zimu?
- A machine transcription gives /zimu/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Zimu have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.4 thousand people named Zimu in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zimu.
- How common is the name Zimu?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4,400 people in South Africa have Zimu as their first surname, about 1 in 13 thousand residents. No national register counts it there; the figure is ours, calibrated against the registers that do.
What do you want to know about Zimu?
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/zimuThe 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, “Zimu”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.