Botes
surname · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 11 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/bɔts/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Botes is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 2.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 2.9M
- NANamibia≈1 in 5.5K
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.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 120 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈23,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
South Africa, 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)chaussure; sabot (des bêtes); patin, semelle
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)
Where in the world
(measured from records)Botes 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | #240 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Botes | 110 |
| NA Namibia | #383 | ≈480 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | — | Botes | 7 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈330 est. | ≈1 in 330K | — | Botes | 11 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 1.1M | — | Botes | 3 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 171K | — | Botes | 53 |
| US United States | — | 115 | 1 in 2.9M | 146 | Botes | 120 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈34 est. | ≈1 in 143K | — | Botes | 26 |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈5 est. | ≈1 in 234K | listed | — | 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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)Botes is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Catalan, plural of bota (“boot”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In enm, plural of bot (“boat”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Galician, second-person singular present subjunctive of botar
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Albanian, definite dative/ablative singular of bote
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In sas, broken; piece (of rope)
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Asturian, plural of bota
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)- Gussie Phillipsb. 1950ZAnot in their usual namebadminton player
- Annelie Botesb. 1957ZASouth African writer (1957 - 2024)
- Costa Botesb. 1958NZNew Zealand filmmaker (1958–2025)
- Michelle Botesb. 1962ZASouth African actress (1962–2024)
- Alvin Botesb. 1973ZASouth African politician
- Morne Botesb. 1978NAactor
- Henrico Botesb. 1979NANamibian footballer
- Eugene Botesb. 1980ZASouth African swimmer
- Jacques Botesb. 1980ZASouth African rugby union footballer
- Mel BotesZASouth African musician
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 146 | #123,817 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 115 | #144,141 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- How do you pronounce Botes?
- A machine transcription gives /bɔts/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Botes have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 23 thousand people named Botes in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled botes.
- How common is the name Botes?
- In the United States, the national register counted 115 people named Botes in 2010, about 1 in 2.9 million residents.
- How common is Botes compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Botes is the 240th most common surname of 285,788 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Botes?
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/botesThe 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, “Botes” — the 240th most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.