Amadou
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in French: a male given name, widely used in Islamic West Africa
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/amadu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Amadou is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In the Niger it is the 69th most common given name.
- ESSpain1 in 22K(measured from records)
- SESweden1 in 56K
- USUnited States1 in 146K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 41 (measured from records)
- 1 in 22K (inferred from the name graph)
2,275 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Spain
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
West African form of Ahmad, 'most praised'
Sources 1
- African Muslim Names
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Amadou is read(measured from records)
Amadou is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- French76%
a male given name, widely used in Islamic West Africa
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English9.8%
A spongy, flammable substance prepared from bracket fungi, formerly used as a styptic and as tinder.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Amadou 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 2,275 | 1 in 146K | 2.3K | Amadou | 41 |
| ES Spain | — | 2,268 | 1 in 22K | 2.3K | Amadou | 33 |
| SE Sweden | — | 181 | 1 in 56K | 181 | — | 3 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 82 | 1 in 211K | 82 | — | 3 |
| FI Finland | — | 37 | 1 in 151K | 73 | — | — |
| NE Niger | #69 | — | — | 24 | Amadou | 5 |
2,275 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)
Amadou 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 Arabic, West African form of Ahmad, 'most praised'
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
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)
- Sheikh Ahmadou Bambab. 1853SNnot in their usual nameSenegalese Sufi leader
- Amadou Mahtar M'Bowb. 1921SNSenegalese politician (1921–2024)
- Amadou Toumani Touréb. 1948MLMalian soldier and politician
- Jean Tiganab. 1955FRnot in their usual nameFrench football manager (born 1955)
- Amadou Gon Coulibalyb. 1959CIIvorian politician (1959–2020)
- Amadou Bab. 1961SNPrime minister of Senegal (2022-2024)
- Amadou Sanogob. 1972MLMalian military officer
- Amadou Diawarab. 1997GNGuinean association football player
- Amadou Haidarab. 1998MLMalian association football player (born 1998)
- Amadou Onanab. 2001BEBelgian association football player (born 2001)
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 62 sources across 35 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 2.3K | #1,586 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.3K | #6,889 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 1.9K | #813 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 181 | #5,615 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 120 | — |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 82 | #4,981 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 73 | #3,828 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 50 | #11,865 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 40 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 37 | — |
| NE Niger | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 24 | #1 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 17 | #6,889 |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Amadou come from?
- West African form of Ahmad, 'most praised' Recorded by African Muslim Names.
- How do you pronounce Amadou?
- A machine transcription gives /amadu/ (IPA) for French.
- What does the name Amadou mean?
- In French, a male given name, widely used in Islamic West Africa
- Is Amadou a male or female name?
- Amadou is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Amadou?
- In the etymology graph, Ahmet, Ahmed and Hamit are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Amadou have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.3 thousand people named Amadou, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled amadou.
- Where is Amadou most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Amadou is densest in Spain — about 1 in 22 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Amadou?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,275 people named Amadou in 2020, about 1 in 146 thousand residents.
- How common is Amadou compared with other names?
- In the Niger, Amadou is the 69th most common given name of 220 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Amadou?
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/amadouThe 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, “Amadou” — the 69th most common given name in Niger. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.