Nuku
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/nuku/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nuku is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 30K(inferred from the name graph)
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 141K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 147K
carrying the name, as Mondonomo estimates it from our sources: no national register counts it in these countries. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 65 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 30K (inferred from the name graph)
≈400 people, est.
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Sources 1
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nuku 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 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | ≈400 est. | ≈1 in 141K | Nuku | 11 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈230 est. | ≈1 in 916K | Nuku | 7 |
| AU Australia | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 147K | Nuku | 40 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 30K | Nuku | 36 |
| TZ Tanzania | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 521K | Nuku | 5 |
| GH Ghana | ≈97 est. | ≈1 in 302K | Nuku | 13 |
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.
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)
Nuku is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Hawaiian, beak, snout, tip, end; spout, beaker of a pitcher; mouth or entrace, as of a harbor, river, or mountain pass; scolding, raving, ranting, grumbling
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Japanese, Rōmaji transcription of ぬく
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Estonian, genitive singular of nukk
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, inflection of nukkua:
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In bnt-pro, meat without bones
as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003
In Hawaiian, snout, beak, mouth
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.
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 8 sources across 5 countries.
Reference works 1
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
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
- How do you pronounce Nuku?
- A machine transcription gives /nuku/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Nuku have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 400 people named Nuku in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nuku.
- How common is the name Nuku?
- Mondonomo estimates about 400 people in South Africa have Nuku as their first surname, about 1 in 141 thousand residents. No national register counts it there; the figure is ours, calibrated against the registers that do.
What do you want to know about Nuku?
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/nukuThe 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, “Nuku”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.