Thandi
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Lovable
A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 17 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/θaⁿɗi/(machine-generated) Swahili · model-generated · uncertain
Thandi is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 1K(inferred from the name graph)
- SZEswatini≈1 in 2.2K
- GYGuyana1 in 25K
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 Thandi itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. 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 1.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈64,000 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)Lovable
Cited for this meaning 1
- The African book of names
Where in the world
(measured from records)Thandi 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 | #119 | ≈64,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Thandi | 66 |
| IN India | — | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 504K | 75 | Thandi | 17 |
| ZM Zambia | — | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Thandi | 6 |
| SZ Eswatini | — | ≈560 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | 3 | — | 6 |
| US United States | — | 190 | 1 in 1.8M | 333 | Thandi | 120 |
| GH Ghana | — | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 249K | — | Thandi | 1 |
| GY Guyana | — | 30 | 1 in 25K | 30 | Thandi | 4 |
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; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Eswatini EBC 2023 Secondary Elections candidate ballots. 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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Thandi Klaasenb. 1931ZASouth African musician (1931–2017)
- Thandi Orleynb. 1956ZASouth African lawyer and businessperson
- Thandi Modiseb. 1959ZASouth African politician
- Thandi Tshabalalab. 1984ZASouth African cricketer
- Thandi Sibisib. 1986ZASouth African art gallery owner and businesswoman
- Thandi Phoenixb. 1993AUAustralian musician
- Thandi Brewerb. 2000ZASouth African actor
- Thandi ShongweSouth African politician
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)30 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 333 | #64,521 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 267 | #72,771 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 158 | #104,819 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 75 | #34,258 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 37 | #9,880 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- 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)
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 Thandi mean, and where does it come from?
- Lovable Recorded by The African book of names.
- How do you pronounce Thandi?
- In Swahili /θaⁿɗi/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Is Thandi a male or female name?
- Thandi is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: United States (Census Bureau, 2020).
- In which country does Thandi have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 64 thousand people named Thandi in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled thandi.
- How common is the name Thandi?
- In the United States, the national register counted 190 people named Thandi in 2020, about 1 in 1.8 million residents.
- How common is Thandi compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Thandi is the 119th most common given name of 189,620 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Thandi?
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/thandiThe 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, “Thandi” — the 119th most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.