Ciobanu

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/tʃ̩obanu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Ciobanu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Romania than in any other country, where it is the 16th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • RORomania≈1 in 645(inferred from the name graph)
  • ITItaly≈1 in 12K
  • MDMoldova≈1 in 700

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.

Romania (inferred from the name graph)

≈33,000 people, est.

Sources
168 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 645 (inferred from the name graph)

Romania, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

recorded in Romanian

subst. I. - (Tec I), frecv. ; C. Ciobanu-Canano post., mold. (Gane). 2. Ciobdn/elea olt. (17 B II 36); -esti, -ifa, -oaia, -us, ss.

Sources 1

  • Dictionar Onomastic Rominesc

Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Ciobanu 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.

Where Ciobanu is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
RO Romania#16≈33,000 est.≈1 in 645—Ciobanu122
IT Italy—≈5,400 est.≈1 in 12K—Ciobanu65
MD Moldova#1≈4,800 est.≈1 in 700—Ciobanu64
ES Spain—2,1721 in 23K2.2KCiobanu69
PL Poland—3581 in 107K253——
NO Norway—2241 in 24K224—8

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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Ciobanu is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Russian surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Türkiye

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Polish

    Also written Чобану, Chobanu

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Čiobanu

39 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1850190019502000Ștefan Ciobanu, b. 1883Valentina Rusu-Ciobanu, b. 1920Ion Constantin Ciobanu, b. 1927Ilarion Ciobanu, b. 1931Mihaela Ciobanu, b. 1973Nelly Ciobanu, b. 1974Marinika Tepić, b. 1974Victor Ciobanu, b. 1992Doina Ciobanu, b. 1994Andrei Ciobanu, b. 1998

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)

FormalStimate domnule Ciobanu,Dear Mr Ciobanu, (English)
InformalSalut Ciobanu,Hi Ciobanu, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 22 sources across 12 countries.

Official registers attesting Ciobanu
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—2.2K#2,257
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—2.2K#2,257
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026253—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—253#12,893
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—224#7,016
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026105—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—105#28,719

Reference works 3

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • 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 Ciobanu?
A machine transcription gives /tʃ̩obanu/ (IPA) for Romanian.
In which country does Ciobanu have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 33 thousand people named Ciobanu in Romania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ciobanu.
How common is the name Ciobanu?
In Spain, the national register counted 2,172 people named Ciobanu, about 1 in 23 thousand residents.
How common is Ciobanu compared with other names?
In Romania, Ciobanu is the 16th most common surname of 78,699 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Ciobanu?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ciobanu

The 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, “Ciobanu” — the 16th most common surname in Romania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ciobanu parses inside a full name →