Bani
loc · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Bani is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in India. Recorded meaning: Bani is a biblical Hebrew name for a boy, meaning 'built'.
- INIndia
- PKPakistan
- USUnited States
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 110 (measured from records)
no count published
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Ben in US United States.
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)
Bani is a biblical Hebrew name for a boy, meaning 'built'. In the Bible, Bani was a Levite from a family line of sacred musicians, suggesting a legacy of faith and creativity. While it is a masculine name in its biblical context, the name is also used in other cultures, such as in India, for girls, where it can mean 'speech' or 'voice'.
Sources 1
- Biblical Names Compiled Database
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bani counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (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)
Bani 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.
The Hebrew name Bani means 'built' and is associated with the theme of restoration and divine construction. It's a name connected to several biblical figures who played a role in rebuilding the community of Israel after the Babylonian exile.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
The name Bani (Hebrew: בָּנִי) is derived from the Hebrew root 'banah' (בנה), meaning 'to build'. It is often interpreted as 'built' or 'built by Yahweh', and is considered by some scholars to be a shortened form of the name Benaiah.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
The Hebrew name Bani (בָּנִי) is derived from the verb 'banah' (בנה), meaning 'to build'. It is often interpreted as "built" or "posterity" and may be a shortened form of a theophoric name like Benaiah, meaning "Yahweh has built".
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
The name Bani is derived from the Hebrew verb 'banah' (בנה), meaning 'to build'. It is often interpreted as meaning 'built' or 'established'. The name may also be a shortened form of Benaiah, which means 'Yahweh has built'.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
The name Bani, likely meaning 'Yahweh has built,' was popular during the post-exilic period, reflecting the community's focus on rebuilding the temple, the city of Jerusalem, and the nation of Israel under God's guidance.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
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)
- John Banib. 1941VUPresident of Vanuatu
- Rakhshan Bani-Etemadb. 1954IRIranian film director and screenwriter
- Bani K Mallickb. 1965INIndian statistician
- Bani Abidib. 1971PKPakistani video artist (born 1971)
- Princess Basmah Bani Ahmadb. 1979CAJordanian princess
- Zahra Banib. 1979SOathletics competitor
- Behnam Banib. 1987IRIranian singer
- Eugenio Banib. 1991ITcyclist
- Mattia Banib. 1993ITItalian association football player
- Oumar Baniactor
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 63 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 367 | #20,273 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 144 | #20,273 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 24 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2015 | 24 | — |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 11 | #1,301 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present) | 2024 | 2 | #1,388 |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2017 | 1 | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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
- Where does the name Bani come from?
- Bani is a biblical Hebrew name for a boy, meaning 'built'. In the Bible, Bani was a Levite from a family line of sacred musicians, suggesting a legacy of faith and creativity. Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
- What does the name Bani mean?
- Recorded meaning: Bani is a biblical Hebrew name for a boy, meaning 'built'.
- In which country does Bani have the most bearers?
- Bani is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled bani.
What do you want to know about Bani?
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/baniThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Bani”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.