Congo

loc · Latin script

Meaning: Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo (a country in Central Africa, larger and to the east of the Republic of the Congo)

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

Congo is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Angola than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • AOAngola≈1 in 18K(inferred from the name graph)
  • COColombia≈1 in 104K
  • ARArgentina1 in 299K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Angola (inferred from the name graph)

≈1,800 people, est.

Sources
52 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 18K (inferred from the name graph)

Angola, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo (a country in Central Africa, larger and to the east of the Republic of the Congo)

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Congo 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 Congo is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AO Angola≈1,800 est.≈1 in 18K—Congo23
CO Colombia≈470 est.≈1 in 104K—Congo26
BR Brazil4081 in 519K408Congo34
US United States3751 in 887K543—52
AR Argentina1521 in 299K152—25
PT Portugal≈17 est.≈1 in 600K—Congo9

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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Congo is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Belgium, United States, Canada, Switzerland

    Languages: English, Dutch, German

    Also written Cong-O, Čongo

  • French name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France

    Also written Cóngò, Cöngó

  • Swahili surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines

    Also written Cong-O

  • Chinese surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, Hong Kong

    Also written Cong-O

  • Greek name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece

    Also written Κονγκο

39 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Congo 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 Portuguese, ellipsis of República Democrática do Congo: Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo (a country in Central Africa, larger and to the east of the Republic of the Congo)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In bnt-pro, antelope spp

    as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003

  • In bnt-pro, banana

    as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003

  • In Guarani, Basado en Montoya, Cadogan lo traduce como “yerba que beben” ([1960] 2005: 50).

    as a wordAguilera Jiménez (2021) — Guaraní surnames update to Cadogan's "Mil apellidos guaraníes"

  • In bnt-pro, antilope spp.

    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)

19401960198020002020Anwar Congo, b. 1940Odilia Congo Yoni, b. 1952Rich Congo, b. 1961Edwin Congo, b. 1976Luis Congo, b. 1989Adama Congo, b. 2004

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 15 sources across 8 countries.

Official registers attesting Congo
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020543#42,928
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000428#46,758
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—408#20,389
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010375#54,864
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—152—
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 Congo mean, and where does it come from?
Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo (a country in Central Africa, larger and to the east of the Republic of the Congo) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Congo have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 1.8 thousand people named Congo in Angola, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled congo.
How common is the name Congo?
In Brazil, the national register counted 408 people named Congo, about 1 in 519 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Congo?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/congo

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 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, “Congo”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Congo parses inside a full name →