Bânu

Name: Bânu: recorded bearers, distribution and rank
Creator: Mondonomo
Published: 2026-10-13
License: https://mondonomo.ai/tos#rights

given name · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Bânu is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Bangladesh than in any other country, where it is the 76th most common surname. Recorded meaning: Two main origins: * Borrowed from Bengali বানু (banu), a surname predominantly found in Bangladesh and West Bengal. * Borrowed from Romanian Banu. Bânu is also written Бану in Cyrillic, บานอ in Thai and বান in Bengali.

RORomania≈1 in 2.2Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
BDBangladesh≈1 in 3.6K
KWKuwait≈1 in 20Kfew records

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 Bânu 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)
: #387 (measured from records)
: 4 (measured from records)
Record sources: 154 (measured from records)
: ≈1 in 2.2K (inferred from the name graph)

measured from records inferred from the name graph

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Bânu in other scripts: Latin, Cyrillic, Thai and 1 more

BanoBânu in Latin

БануBânu in Cyrillic

บานอBânu in Thai

বানBânu in Bengali

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Banu in BD Bangladesh, ID Indonesia, RO Romania, Bano in PK Pakistan and Baño in EC Ecuador.

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

Bânu

Bengaliবানুbanu(measured from records)
RomanianBanu(measured from records)

Two main origins: * Borrowed from Bengali বানু (banu), a surname predominantly found in Bangladesh and West Bengal. * Borrowed from Romanian Banu.

Cited for this meaning 4

Muslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman
TDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
Wiktionary
Nordic Names

Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Bânu is found

Bânu 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 Bânu is recorded, by country
Country					Most common spelling	Sources
BD Bangladesh	#76	≈49,000 est.	≈1 in 3.6K	—	Banu	48
PK Pakistan	#67	≈42,000 est.	≈1 in 6K	2	Bano	69
RO Romania	#700	≈8,800 est.	≈1 in 2.2K	—	Banu	29
ID Indonesia	—	≈8,000 est.	≈1 in 36K	listed	Banu	87
EC Ecuador	#755	4,902as Baño	1 in 3.4K	4.9K	Baño	20
HR Croatia	—	2,779as Ban	1 in 1.5K	2.8K	—	3
SI Slovenia	—	598as Ban	1 in 3.5K	598	—	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: Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) — Form-33 List of Contesting Candidates, 2018 General Election; INEC — civil registry names; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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).

Notable people with this name

Banu Mushtaqb. 1948INIndian writer and activist (born 1948)
Banu Avarb. 1955TRTurkish journalist and author of Avar origin (born 1955)
Banu Alkanb. 1958TRTurkish actress of Bosniak origin (born 1958)

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

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Bânu under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Bânu mean, and where does it come from?: Two main origins: * Borrowed from Bengali বানু (banu), a surname predominantly found in Bangladesh and West Bengal. * Borrowed from Romanian Banu. Recorded by Muslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman and TDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary) and 2 other sources.
Is Bânu a male or female name?: Bânu is a female 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.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Bânu?: Mondonomo estimates about 49 thousand people named Bânu in Bangladesh, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled banu. After it come Pakistan, Romania, Indonesia and Ecuador; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Bânu?: In Ecuador, the national register counted 4,902 people named Baño in 2024, about 1 in 3.4 thousand residents.
How common is Bânu compared with other names?: In Bangladesh, Bânu is the 76th most common surname of 12,312 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Bânu?

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/b%C3%A2nu

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 2026-10-13 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, “Bânu” — the 76th most common surname in Bangladesh. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Bânu parses inside a full name →