Babb

surname · Latin script

Meaning: From the Old English personal name Babba

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 18 countries · latest register: Guyana, 2025

/ˈbæb/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Babb is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • GYGuyana1 in 3.8K(measured from records)
  • GDGrenada1 in 13K
  • VCSt. Vincent & Grenadines1 in 20K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

12,794 people, 2010

Record sources
43 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 3.8K (inferred from the name graph)

Guyana

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

From the Old English personal name Babba.

Cited for this meaning 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Where in the world

(measured from records)

Babb 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 Babb is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States12,7941 in 26K13KBabb43
GY Guyana1961 in 3.8K196——
CR Costa Rica1261 in 40K126——
NL Netherlands731 in 237K73——
NO Norway201 in 273K20——
GD Grenada91 in 13K9——
VC St. Vincent & Grenadines51 in 20K5——

12,794 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025). 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)

Babb is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Thai surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, United States, Laos

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written แบบ, Baep, BaeB, แบ๊บ, แบบี

51 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)

Babb is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, pet-form of Barbara or nickname from babe ‘infant, young child’; first attested Alwinus, Richard Babbe 1198 FF (Sf)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, Alwinus, Richard Babbe 1198 FF (Sf), 1230 P (D); Ralph, Walter le Babb(e) 1199 MemR (W), 1327 SRSx. A pet-form of Barbara. cf. Margery Babel, Nicholas Babelot 1279 RH (C) and BABOT. Le Babbe is a nickname from babe (c1230 MED) ‘infant, young child’.

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In Icelandic, used in the phrase "það er komið babb í bátinn" ("a problem has come up")

    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)
1850190019502000Bianca Babb, b. 1856Charlie Babb, b. 1873Kroger Babb, b. 1906Sanora Babb, b. 1907Gene Babb, b. 1934Glenn Babb, b. 1943Phil Babb, b. 1970Sergio Babb, b. 1982Chris Babb, b. 1990Nick Weiler-Babb, b. 1995

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).

How to address them

(machine-generated)
FormalDear Babb,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

30 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 18 countries.

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • 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 Babb mean, and where does it come from?
From the Old English personal name Babba. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Babb?
A machine transcription gives /ˈbæb/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Babb have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 13 thousand people named Babb, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled babb.
Where is Babb most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Babb is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 3.8 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Babb?
In the United States, the national register counted 12,794 people named Babb in 2010, about 1 in 26 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Babb?

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

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, “Babb”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Babb parses inside a full name →