Amba
loc · Latin script
Meaning: lang., people, Africa
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Amba is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Congo - Kinshasa than in any other country.
- GYGuyana1 in 75K(measured from records)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 160K
- CDCongo - Kinshasa≈1 in 296K
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.
- Congo - Kinshasa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 74 (measured from records)
- 1 in 75K (inferred from the name graph)
≈340 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
lang., people, Africa
Sources 1
- Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Amba 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 296K | 1 | — | 1 |
| AU Australia | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 160K | 1 | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 435K | listed | — | 29 |
| US United States | 138 | 1 in 2.4M | 124 | — | 58 |
| IT Italy | ≈51 est. | ≈1 in 1.2M | listed | — | 2 |
| BE Belgium | ≈37 est. | ≈1 in 319K | 4 | — | 2 |
| GY Guyana | 10 | 1 in 75K | 10 | — | — |
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; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present). 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)
Amba 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 lua, v. When followed by the in fin. this word means to be about to, become, get, intend, mean, plan, purpose, reckon, suppose, regard, resolve, conclude, decide, determine, threaten. Hence we have udi wamba kuya, he is about to go; cilulu cikadi ciamba kutika, the cloth is getting or becoming black.
as a wordGrammar and Dictionary of the Buluba-Lulua Language
In lua, to speak, tell, state, say, command or order, bid, declare, announce, certify, exclaim, explain, think in sense of fancy or imagine, appoint or fix a day, talk about, tell about, narrate, testify, define, describe, proclaim, publish, relate, reply (to a question), report, respond, utter, assert, mention.
as a wordGrammar and Dictionary of the Buluba-Lulua Language
In English, A characteristic landform in Ethiopia: a steep-sided, flat-topped mountain, often the site of a settlement.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In srn, a female given name from Akan, masculine equivalent Kwami, given to a female born on a Saturday
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, a characteristic landform in Ethiopia, consisting of a steep-sided, flat-topped mountain
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)
- Sufi Amba Prasadb. 1858INIndian revolutionary (1858–1919)
- Rai Bahadur Amba Prasadb. 1860INIndian businessman
- Lalita Pawarb. 1916INnot in their usual nameIndian actress
- Amba Sanyalb. 1945INIndian actress
- Amba Bongob. 1962CDwriter in DRC
- Amba Prasadb. 1993INIndian politician
- Amba Etta-Tawob. 1993USAmerican football player (born 1993)
- Amba Jacksonb. 1995daughter of Jade Jagger
- Amba KakINIndian researcher
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 36 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 4 | #108,270 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Amba mean, and where does it come from?
- lang., people, Africa Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
- In which country does Amba have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 344 people named Amba in Congo - Kinshasa, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Amba most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Amba is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 75 thousand people — even though Congo - Kinshasa holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Amba?
- In the United States, the national register counted 138 people named Amba in 2020, about 1 in 2.4 million residents.
What do you want to know about Amba?
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/ambaThe 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, “Amba”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.