Obe
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Initialism of Office of Bilingual Education
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/oʊb/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Obe is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 14K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 315K
- USUnited States1 in 2.6M
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 133 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
≈15,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Nigeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Initialism of Office of Bilingual Education.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Obe 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 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 14K | listed | Obe | 46 |
| CM Cameroon | ≈840 est. | ≈1 in 33K | — | Obe | 3 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 315K | 78 | Obe | 105 |
| FR France | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 375K | 22 | — | 2 |
| PH Philippines | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 608K | — | Obe | 11 |
| US United States | 130 | 1 in 2.6M | 279 | Obe | 133 |
| GA Gabon | ≈31 est. | ≈1 in 72K | 4 | — | 1 |
| AT Austria | ≈30 est. | ≈1 in 297K | — | Obe | 13 |
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: Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Ministere de l'Interieur — 2025 candidate lists (local + legislative). 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)
Obe 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 Serbo-Croatian, both (for feminine pairs)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In iso, dated spelling of ụbị
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In bar, up, off
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Yoruba, Spirit
as a wordYorubaName Dictionary (CC0, tone-marked Yoruba names with meaning/etymology)
In roa-cha, tree
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)
- Cornelia Obeb. 1944FRFrench politician
- Ayo Obeb. 1955GBBritish-Nigerian lawyer and human rights activist
- Amir Obeb. 1989USAmerican rapper, singer-songwriter and record producer
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)
Attested in 23 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 279 | #74,639 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 130 | #130,610 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 106 | #143,847 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 78 | #38,693 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 44 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 38 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 36 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 32 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 31 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 24 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 24 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 22 | — |
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
- What does the name Obe mean, and where does it come from?
- Initialism of Office of Bilingual Education. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Obe?
- A machine transcription gives /oʊb/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Obe have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 15 thousand people named Obe in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled obe.
- How common is the name Obe?
- In the United States, the national register counted 130 people named Obe in 2010, about 1 in 2.6 million residents.
What do you want to know about Obe?
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/obeThe 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, “Obe”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.