Oni
loc · Latin script
Meaning: West African: 'desired'; Yoruba (Nigeria): 'born in a sacred location'
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Oni is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- ALAlbania1 in 53K(measured from records)
- GYGuyana1 in 125K
- EEEstonia≈1 in 176K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 8 (measured from records)
- 1 in 53K (inferred from the name graph)
422 people, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Albania
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)
West African: 'desired'; Yoruba (Nigeria): 'born in a sacred location'
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Oni 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 422 | 1 in 788K | 984 | — | 7 |
| BR Brazil | 404 | 1 in 524K | 460 | — | — |
| IT Italy | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 357K | 1 | — | — |
| ES Spain | ≈81 est. | ≈1 in 617K | 66 | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈65 est. | ≈1 in 1M | 453 | — | 1 |
| AL Albania | 58 | 1 in 53K | 57 | — | — |
| EE Estonia | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 176K | listed | — | — |
| GY Guyana | 6 | 1 in 125K | 6 | — | — |
| IS Iceland | 1 | 1 in 351K | 1 | — | — |
422 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Oni 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.
protection; shelter. heaven and earth conjoined.
as a nameThe Penguin book of Hindu names for boys
born in a sacred location.
as a nameAfrican Names
Bird.
as a nameThe African book of names
In xgn-pro, 1 hollow, groove, nick (on point of an arrow) 2 mark in sheep's ear
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In xgn-pro, defile, gorge
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
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)
- Tolu Onib. 1980NGEpidemiologist and public health scientist
- Miye Onib. 1997USNigrerian-American basketball player
- Francesco Onibishop of the Roman Catholic Church
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 51 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 984 | #26,162 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 494 | #43,651 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 453 | #12,261 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 266 | #68,973 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 66 | #36,811 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 66 | #36,589 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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 Oni mean, and where does it come from?
- West African: 'desired'; Yoruba (Nigeria): 'born in a sacred location' Recorded by African Names.
- In which country does Oni have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 422 people named Oni, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Oni most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Oni is densest in Albania — about 1 in 53 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Oni?
- In the United States, the national register counted 422 people named Oni in 2020, about 1 in 788 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Oni?
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/oniThe 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, “Oni”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.