Kulu

loc · Latin script

Meaning: accusative singular of kul

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

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

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 14Kas Kali(measured from records)
  • PKPakistan≈1 in 281Kas Kalu
  • NONorway≈1 in 599K

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 Kulu itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)

≈65,000 named Kalu, est.

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
187 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 599K (inferred from the name graph)

Norway, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

KaluLatin(measured from records)
কলBengali(measured from records)
කුලSinhala(measured from records)

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Kalu in PK Pakistan, NG Nigeria, LK Sri Lanka and 1 more and Kool in US United States, KE Kenya.

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)

accusative singular of kul

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world(measured from records)

Kulu 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 Kulu is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NG Nigeria—≈65,000 est.≈1 in 3.3KlistedKalu38
US United States—23,482as Kali1 in 14K23KKool187
BD Bangladesh—≈2,300 est.≈1 in 72K—Kalu20
PK Pakistan—≈830 est.≈1 in 281K—Kalu11
KE Kenya—≈790 est.≈1 in 68K—Kool8
LK Sri Lanka#395≈750 est.≈1 in 31K—Kalu25
NO Norway—≈9 est.≈1 in 599K172—5

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; the african-book-names-hodari-2003 register; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Kulu is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name6 spellings in the group

    Also written Kulú

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Ķûlû

  • Amharic given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Israel, Ethiopia, Netherlands

    Also written ኩሉ, Külü

44 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)

Kulu 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, born on Friday

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

  • Grow; mature.

    as a nameThe African book of names

  • In men, flock, as of birds, fish; crowd; clump or thicket. Nwoni gului i léwéa sangi

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

  • In men, v., to agree to, to consent, to acknowledge. Mu kulua

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

  • In bbn, breadfruit

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

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)

  • Priit Kulub. 1945EEEstonian engineer (born 1945)
  • Hill Kulub. 1967EEEstonian human geographer (born 1967)

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 19 sources across 11 countries.

Official registers attesting Kulu
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NG NigeriaThe African Book of Names (Hodari, 2003)———

Reference works 4

  • 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)
  • Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)

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 Kulu mean, and where does it come from?
accusative singular of kul Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Kulu have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 65 thousand people named Kalu in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Kulu?
In the United States, the national register counted 23,482 people named Kali in 2020, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
How common is Kulu compared with other names?
In Sri Lanka, Kulu is the 395th most common given name of 14,062 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Kulu?

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

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, “Kulu” — the 395th most common given name in Sri Lanka. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kulu parses inside a full name →