Barnaba
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Aramaico: "figlio di Naba"; significato di Naba incerto
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 13 countries · latest register: DZS, 2021
/baɾnaɓa/(machine-generated) Swahili · model-generated
Barnaba is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Tanzania than in any other country.
- TZTanzania≈1 in 6.8Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- HRCroatia1 in 121K
- KEKenya≈1 in 180Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Tanzania (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 84 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 6.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈10,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Tanzania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Aramaico: "figlio di Naba"; significato di Naba incerto. Nome dell'apostolo e, secondo la tradizione, primo vescovo di Milano.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dizionario Dei Nomi e Cognomi Italiani
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Barnaba is found
(measured from records)Barnaba 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TZ Tanzania | #923 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.8K | — | Barnaba | 17 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 33K | 1 | Barnaba | 18 |
| US United States | — | 376 | 1 in 885K | 395 | Barnaba | 84 |
| KE Kenya | — | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 184K | — | Barnaba | 12 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 1.7M | — | Barnaba | 8 |
| AR Argentina | — | 67 | 1 in 679K | 67 | — | — |
| HR Croatia | — | 35 | 1 in 121K | 35 | — | — |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form). 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)Barnaba 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 Italian, dal biblico Barnaba
as a nameDizionario Dei Nomi e Cognomi Italiani
In Italian, do nome hebraico Barnabas; sobrenome filiatício
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In Italian, Variante di Barnabei
as a nameDizionario dei cognomi italiani
Figlio del profeta
as a nameIl grande libro dei nomi per bebè. Significato, origini, curiosità. Oltre 7000 nomi per bambine e bambini Significato,…
In Polish, a male given name from Ancient Greek [in turn from Biblical Hebrew], equivalent to English Barnaby
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)- Francesca Marini Barnabab. 1877ITItalian poet (1877-1960)
- Pier Arrigo Barnabab. 1891ITItalian politician (1891-1967)
- Pier Federico Barnabab. 1928ITItalian geologist (born 1928)
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)Evidence
(measured from records)28 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 13 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What are other forms of the name Barnaba?
- In the etymology graph, Barney, Barna and Barnaby are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Barnaba?
- It depends on the language: in Swahili /baɾnaɓa/; in Spanish /baɾnaβa/; in Italian /barnaba/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- What does the name Barnaba mean?
- Recorded meaning: Aramaico: "figlio di Naba"; significato di Naba incerto.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Barnaba?
- Mondonomo estimates about 10 thousand people named Barnaba in Tanzania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled barnaba. After it come Italy, United States, Kenya and Nigeria; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Barnaba?
- In the United States, the national register counted 376 people named Barnaba in 2010, about 1 in 885 thousand residents.
- How common is Barnaba compared with other names?
- In Tanzania, Barnaba is the 923rd most common surname of 112,969 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Barnaba?
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/barnabaThe 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, “Barnaba” — the 923rd most common surname in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.