Baba
loc · Latin script
Meaning: Kiswahili/Fulani/Yoruba and other West African languages: 'father' or 'elder'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Baba is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Indonesia than in any other country.
- TGTogo≈1 in 2.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- SNSenegal≈1 in 5.6K
- AZAzerbaijan≈1 in 11K
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.
- Indonesia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 78 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.4K (inferred from the name graph)
≈6,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Togo, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Kiswahili/Fulani/Yoruba and other West African languages: 'father' or 'elder'
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 25 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Baba 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID Indonesia | ≈6,000 est. | ≈1 in 44K | — | Baba | 78 |
| TG Togo | ≈3,500 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | 2 | — | 2 |
| FR France | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 22K | 191 | — | 2 |
| SN Senegal | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 5.6K | 16 | — | 4 |
| IN India | 1,804 | 1 in 735K | 1.8K | — | 36 |
| GN Guinea | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 11K | 2 | — | — |
| AZ Azerbaijan | ≈970 est. | ≈1 in 11K | 24 | — | 4 |
| GM Gambia | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 12K | 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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics; DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024); Journal Officiel — Liste definitive des candidats (legislatives 2024); DGE — Liste provisoire des candidatures communales Conakry 2026; IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 2022. 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)
Baba 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, ‘the father’; nickname of Muḥammad al-Ghabaʾ, a Muslim leader of Kumasi
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
In German, from Slavic baba 'grandmother; old woman'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In English, A kind of sponge cake soaked in rum-flavoured syrup.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Romanian, tc. tata". 1. Bab( -Novac, generalul lui Mihai Viteazul ; Baba-Vergu ar. (Cara 34), corespunde numelor aromlne formate cu Papa- ; Babd- Celebi, post. mold. (RI X 275). 2. Babac b. (Cat ; Tis), < subst. babac ; BObaeesti, fam., olt. (AO XV 63) ; Baba/che (16 B V 276) ; -chi din Manicesti (16 B VI 127).
as a nameDictionar Onomastic Rominesc
Plg. lat. Bobas mšk. (J. Endzellns, 1956, p. 90), Bab pv. (ten pat). Šiuos ir kt. lat. vv. J. Endzelynas sieja su lat. baba „boba“. Dar plg. lenk. avd. Baba (SSNO 1 74), Baba, Babek, Babin ir kt. (S. Rospond, 1967, p. 11), rus. Баба (H. Тупиков, 1903, c. 33). Tačiau žr. Bdbys.
as a nameLietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Dictionary of Lithuanian Surnames)
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)
- Baba Taherb. 947IRPersian poet
- Baba Faridb. 1175PK12th-century Punjabi Sunni Muslim preacher and mystic
- Ahmad Baba al-Timbuktib. 1556MLMalian Muslim scholar (1556-1627)
- Corneliu Babab. 1906RORomanian painter (1906-1997)
- Baba Amteb. 1914INIndian freedom fighter, social worker (1914–2008)
- Shohei Babab. 1938JPJapanese professional wrestler (1938-1999)
- Togo Igawab. 1946JPnot in their usual nameJapanese actor
- Abdul Rahman Babab. 1994GHGhanaian footballer
- Fumika Babab. 1995JPJapanese actress and model (born 1995)
- Iddrisu Babab. 1996GHassociation football player
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 83 sources across 44 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 1.8K | #3,398 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 191 | — |
| TG Togo | Journal Officiel — Liste definitive des candidats (legislatives 2024) | 2024 | 2 | #11 |
Reference works 8
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Lietuvių kalbos institutas — Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Lithuanian surname dictionary)
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- 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 Baba mean, and where does it come from?
- Kiswahili/Fulani/Yoruba and other West African languages: 'father' or 'elder' Recorded by African Names.
- In which country does Baba have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 6.0 thousand people named Baba in Indonesia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled baba.
- How common is the name Baba?
- In India, the national register counted 1,804 people named Baba, about 1 in 735 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Baba?
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/babaThe 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, “Baba”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.