Abubakar

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Abubakar is a given name, most frequently recorded in Nigeria, where it is the 7th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Swahili, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Noble.

rarermore common
  • NGNigeria1 in 258◐
  • KEKenya1 in 18K
  • MYMalaysia1 in 22K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈2.0K ●

across 9 countries

Sources
165 ●

383K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 27K ◐

Sweden

Spellings & scripts●

Locally spelled Abu Bakar in MY Malaysia.

Meaning & origin●

Noble

Sources 1

  • The book of African names

Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Abubakar is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NG Nigeria#7282,394366K rec.——Abubakar139
IN India—4,4361.1K rec.—90Abubakar69
MY Malaysia—2,985509 rec.—1.5KAbu Bakar33
KE Kenya—1,56684 rec.——Abubakar36
US United States—1,1495.9K rec.1 in 290K1.1KAbubakar165
PH Philippines—1,1003.3K rec.——Abubakar41
PK Pakistan—1,0861.1K rec.——Abubakar65
GB United Kingdom—1,0451.2K rec.—3Abubakar89
GH Ghana#2538081.1K rec.——Abubakar46
TZ Tanzania—552217 rec.—2Abubakar37
NO Norway—39528 rec.—388Abubakar9
SE Sweden—380△41 rec.1 in 27K380Abubakar23

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English295K43%
  • Swahili229K33%
  • Hindi36K5%
  • Arabic23K3%
  • Indonesian19K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English295,28343%
Swahili228,57633%
Hindi36,1785%
Arabic23,2473%
Indonesian18,6933%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Abubakar is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Swahili given name401K records spelled Abubakar3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Nigeria, India, Kenya, Philippines

    Also written Abu-Bakar

  • Hindi given name67K records spelled Abubakar14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Abu-Bakar, Ãbúbãkår, Àbubakar, Àbûbàkár, Ábubakar

  • Arabic given name65K records spelled Abubakar4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, India

    Languages: Arabic, Amharic

    Also written Abu-Bakar, Ãbû-Bâkâr

  • Indonesian given name57K records spelled Abubakar5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Nigeria, Indonesia, India, Philippines

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Abu-Bakar, Àbùbàkàr

  • a separate given name15K records spelled Abubakar2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Nigeria, United States, Ethiopia

    Also written Abu-Bakar

  • Spanish given name14K records spelled Abubakar8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Nigeria, Philippines, Spain, France

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Abu-Bakar, Ãbūbākár

58 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.

Other recorded senses●

Abubakar is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • first Khalifa after the death of

    as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names

  • The first Khalifa after Prophet

    as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names

  • In Cebuano, a Moro surname from Arabic

    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.

Over time●

05010015020019201940196019802000152 · 1993

Show as table
Abubakar in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1919–2015
Yearrecords
19191
19201
19211
19231
19243
19252
19281
19291
19302
19311
19322
19332
19345
19359
19366
19376
19386
19397
19409
19416
19429
194312
19448
194512
194610
194720
194814
194923
195023
195122
195218
195325
195418
195543
195619
195734
195834
195940
196037
196137
196242
196344
196463
196560
196660
196744
196845
196958
197053
197149
197262
197353
197465
197570
197691
197776
197855
197959
198071
198172
198286
1983112
1984114
198592
198685
1987127
1988101
198990
1990118
1991115
1992138
1993152
1994143
1995114
199650
199760
199843
19993
200811
20104
20114
20122
20132
201417
20158

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 85 years between 1919–2015. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

190019502000Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, b. 1912A. A. Rahim, b. 1920Abubakar Siddique, b. 1934Abubakar Rimi, b. 1940Abubakar Audu, b. 1947Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, b. 1961Bukola Saraki, b. 1962Abubakar Sani Bello, b. 1967Abubakar Shekau, b. 1973Abubakar Salim, b. 1993

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●

Attested in 67 sources across 33 countries.

Official registers attesting Abubakar
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—3.4K#2,326
IN IndiaIndia Names Dataset — Andhra Pradesh Electoral Rolls (Internet Archive)—1.2K#2,967
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20201.1K#11,225
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.1K#24,300
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010594#37,492
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—388#2,980
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—380#3,337
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000272#67,725
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—237#14,545
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—237#14,492
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—220#8,380
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020203—

Reference works 6

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name 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 2026-09-12 data build · 318 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Abubakar?
We estimate roughly 2.0 thousand people bear Abubakar (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Abubakar have the most bearers?
Abubakar is most frequently recorded in Nigeria, where it is most often spelled abubakar.
How common is Abubakar compared with other names?
In Nigeria, Abubakar is the 7th most common given name of 146,224 given names recorded there.
Is Abubakar a male or female name?
Abubakar is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Abubakar mean?
Recorded meaning: Noble
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/abubakar

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

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, “Abubakar” — the 7th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Abubakar parses inside a full name →