Aliyu

given name · English · Latin script

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

Aliyu is a given name, most frequently recorded in Nigeria, where it is the 29th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Swahili, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: From Arabic عَلِيّ (ʕaliyy).

rarermore common
  • NGNigeria1 in 494
  • KEKenya1 in 44K
  • CMCameroon1 in 53K

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

≈3

across 1 country

Sources
120

185K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 13M

Poland

Meaning & origin

From Arabic عَلِيّ (ʕaliyy).

Sources 1

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

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

Where Aliyu is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NG Nigeria#29147,429183K rec.listedAliyu120
KE Kenya6542 rec.Aliyu3
US United States449959 rec.186Aliyu88
GB United Kingdom175230 rec.Aliyu63
MY Malaysia4118 rec.Aliyu15
IN India4035 rec.Aliyu17
CM Cameroon3756 rec.Aliyu6
GH Ghana3447 rec.Aliyu14
TR Türkiye3144 rec.Aliyu12
DE Germany3170 rec.Aliyu26
CN China234 rec.Aliyu6
PL Poland31 rec.1 in 13M31

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

Languages

  • English147K61%
  • Swahili46K19%
  • Indonesian12K5%
  • Amharic10K4%
  • Arabic8.2K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English147,37161%
Swahili46,41219%
Indonesian11,5895%
Amharic10,4634%
Arabic8,2263%

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

Aliyu is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Amharic given name40K records spelled Aliyu7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya

    Languages: Amharic, Arabic, Hebrew

    Also written አልዩ, አሊዩ, Aleyu

  • Indonesian given name26K records spelled Aliyu5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Nigeria, Indonesia, Kenya, United States

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Àliyu, Àlíyú, Ãlîyû

  • Spanish given name3.5K records spelled Aliyu6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Nigeria, France, Mexico, United States

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Aliyú

43 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

Aliyu is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Yoruba, a male given name from Arabic, equivalent to English Ali

    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

1900195020002050Akilu Aliyu, b. 1918Saratu Iya Aliyu, b. 1948Jummai Babangida Aliyu, b. 1959Jelani Aliyu, b. 1968Abdulkadir Aliyu, b. 1974Sumayya Aliyu, b. 1988Aliyu Nnamigi Aishat, b. 1988Hadiza Aliyu, b. 1989Ibrahim Aliyu, b. 2002

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 12 sources across 7 countries.

Reference works 1

  • 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 · 14 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Aliyu?
We estimate roughly 3 people bear Aliyu (counting its spellings and scripts) across 1 country in our records.
In which country does Aliyu have the most bearers?
Aliyu is most frequently recorded in Nigeria, where it is most often spelled aliyu.
How common is Aliyu compared with other names?
In Nigeria, Aliyu is the 29th most common given name of 146,224 given names recorded there.
Is Aliyu a male or female name?
Aliyu 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 Aliyu mean?
Recorded meaning: From Arabic عَلِيّ (ʕaliyy).
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/aliyu

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, “Aliyu” — the 29th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Aliyu parses inside a full name →