Bemba
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Mouth with large and bulky lips
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 11 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/bɑ̃ba/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bemba is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country.
- ARArgentina1 in 479K(measured from records)
- BEBelgium1 in 617K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 1.7M
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Bemba itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Argentina (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 11 (measured from records)
- 1 in 479K (inferred from the name graph)
95 people
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Argentina
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Бемба in UA Ukraine.
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)Mouth with large and bulky lips
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world
(measured from records)Bemba 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.
95 people counted by RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); 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)Bemba 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 English, lang., Africa
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, A member of an African tribe inhabiting parts of Zambia, Zaire, Tanzania and Malawi.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In bnt-pro, bird of prey spp.
as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003
In Swahili, to coax, seduce
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In kam, maize
as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003
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)- Sylvain Bembab. 1934CGCongolese journalist and writer (1934-1995)
- Françoise Bembab. 1967CDCongolese politician
- Matthieu Bembab. 1988FRGuadeloupean footballer
- Suzy Bembab. 2000FRFrench actress (born 2000)
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)16 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 95 | — |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 19 | #49,033 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 8 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 8 | #149,805 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 6 | #154,812 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 5 | #101,952 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3 | #248,892 |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Bemba mean, and where does it come from?
- Mouth with large and bulky lips Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Bemba?
- A machine transcription gives /bɑ̃ba/ (IPA) for French.
- In which country does Bemba have the most bearers?
- In Argentina, the national register counted about 95 people named Bemba, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Bemba most common?
- Bemba is densest in Argentina, where the national register counts about 1 in 479 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Bemba?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 95 people named Bemba, about 1 in 479 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Bemba?
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/bembaThe 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, “Bemba”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.