Bula
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Bula is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Two main origins: * Borrowed from Polish Bula or Buła, from buła (“round object; fat person”). * Borrowed from American Spanish Bula.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 717as Bala(inferred from the name graph)
- TRTürkiye≈1 in 1.1Kas Bal
- USUnited States1 in 1.5Kas Bell
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 Bula 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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 260 (measured from records)
- 1 in 7.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈300,000 named Bala, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Bala in NG Nigeria, BD Bangladesh, SG Singapore, Bal in US United States, TR Türkiye and Balu in IN India.
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)
- Polish Bulaor(measured from records)
- Polish Bula rootbuła“round object; fat person”(measured from records)
- American SpanishBula(measured from records)
Two main origins: * Borrowed from Polish Bula or Buła, from buła (“round object; fat person”). * Borrowed from American Spanish Bula.
Sources 3
- Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Dictionary of Lithuanian Surnames)
- Wiktionary
- Skok, Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (1971-74)
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bula 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #458 | ≈300,000 est. | ≈1 in 717 | listed | Bala | 46 |
| US United States | — | 220,599as Bell | 1 in 1.5K | 267K | Bal | 260 |
| TR Türkiye | — | ≈72,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Bal | 49 |
| IN India | #278 | 51,870as Bala | 1 in 26K | 52K | Balu | 218 |
| BD Bangladesh | #148 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 5K | — | Bala | 54 |
| SG Singapore | #427 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | Bala | 50 |
| XK Kosovo | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | 1.8K | — | 6 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 471 | 1 in 7.2K | 471 | — | — |
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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)
Bula 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 cau-nkh-pro, aurochs
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In tuw-pro, thorn
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In cau-tsz-pro, hoof
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In kpg, bulging eyes ('bug-eyed', as a person who sees a ghost)
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Swedish, a bulge, a bump (small, round, hard, tender swelling, especially one caused by a strike or blow)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Polish, boule (one of the bowls used in the French game of boules)
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)
- Bula Crokerb. 1884USsecond wife of Richard "Boss" Croker
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 42 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 762 | #4,906 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 658 | #36,570 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 589 | #37,735 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 569 | #36,956 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 480 | #9,479 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 471 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Lietuvių kalbos institutas — Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Lithuanian surname dictionary)
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Dictionary of Lithuanian Surnames)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Bula mean, and where does it come from?
- Two main origins: * Borrowed from Polish Bula or Buła, from buła (“round object; fat person”). * Borrowed from American Spanish Bula. Recorded by Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Dictionary of Lithuanian Surnames) and Wiktionary and 1 other source.
- Is Bula a male or female name?
- Bula is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Bula have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 298 thousand people named Bala in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Bula most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bula is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 7.2 thousand people — even though Nigeria holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Bula?
- In Uruguay, the national register counted 471 people named Bula, about 1 in 7.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Bula compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Bula is the 458th most common surname of 346,007 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bula?
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/bulaThe 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, “Bula” — the 458th most common surname in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.