Beda
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Germanic, from a word meaning 'to compel/exhort'; linked to OE boedan and Gothic baidjan
A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 26 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/beða/(machine-generated) Spanish · model-generated
Beda is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.
- CICôte d’Ivoire≈1 in 14K(inferred from the name graph)
- CHSwitzerland≈1 in 17Kfew records
- SESweden1 in 22K
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.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 82 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
≈9,100 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)Germanic, from a word meaning 'to compel/exhort'; linked to OE boedan and Gothic baidjan
Cited for this meaning 1
- Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Beda 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | ≈9,100 est. | ≈1 in 160K | 135 | Beda | 9 |
| TZ Tanzania | ≈4,800 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Beda | 12 |
| MX Mexico | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 48K | 23 | Beda | 57 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 2.8K | — | — |
| PH Philippines | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 108K | listed | Beda | 23 |
| VE Venezuela | 950 | 1 in 30K | 950 | Beda | 13 |
| CH Switzerland | ≈540 est. | ≈1 in 17K | 27 | Beda | 10 |
| SE Sweden | 465 | 1 in 22K | 465 | — | 1 |
| FI Finland | 191 | 1 in 29K | 726 | — | 2 |
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: RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset); nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)Beda 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 Spanish, Bede (English monk and scholar)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Beda är ursprungligen ett mansnamn av ovisst ursprung. I Sverige kom Beda att uppfattas som kvinnonamn och fick en viss spridning under 1800-talet och det tidiga 1900-talet. I den rikssvenska almanackan 27 maj, efter den engelske munken Beda Venerabilis (död 735).
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Preghiera / Colui che lotta
as a nameIl grande libro dei nomi per bebè. Significato, origini, curiosità. Oltre 7000 nomi per bambine e bambini Significato,…
In Russian, Vasilii Beda, clerk in Moscovite Rus'. 1453.
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
In nxg, tread firmly upon, stamp on
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)- Bedab. 672GBAnglo-Saxon monk, writer and saint (672/3–735)
- Beda Weberb. 1798ATAustrian writer (1798-1858)
- Beda Giovanni Cardinaleb. 1869ITRoman Catholic archbishop
- Beda Heftib. 1897CHSwiss civil engineer and architect (1897-1981)
- Beda Changb. 1905CNChinese Jesuit martyr (1905–1951)
- Beda Batkab. 1922CZCzech-American cinematographer
- Beda Allemannb. 1926CHSwiss literary critic and essayist (1926-1991)
- Beda Humbelb. 1933CHSwiss politician (1933-2019)
- Beda Docampo Feijóob. 1948ESSpanish director
- Beda M. Stadlerb. 1950CHSwiss university teacher
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)49 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies | — | 2.8K | #202 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 180 | #3,573 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 135 | #23,190 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 27 | #29,501 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 11 | #36,831 |
Reference works 5
- 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
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 Beda mean, and where does it come from?
- Germanic, from a word meaning 'to compel/exhort'; linked to OE boedan and Gothic baidjan Recorded by Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios.
- How do you pronounce Beda?
- In Spanish /beða/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Is Beda a male or female name?
- Beda is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: Venezuela (asosab), Finland (DVV) and United States (Census Bureau, 2020).
- In which country does Beda have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 9.1 thousand people named Beda in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled beda.
- How common is the name Beda?
- In Venezuela, the national register counted 950 people named Beda, about 1 in 30 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Beda?
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/bedaThe 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, “Beda”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.