Babu

given name · Hindi · Latin script

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

Babu is a given name, most frequently recorded in India. In Bahrain it is the 54th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Hindi and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Kiswahili: 'grandfather'; also a West African male name meaning 'willing'.

rarermore common
  • INIndia1 in 1.1K◐
  • QAQatar1 in 2K
  • AEUnited Arab Emirates1 in 4.3K

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

≈1.4K ●

across 7 countries

#913 ●

of 16M given names

3 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
260 ●

1.7M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 76K ◐

Sweden

Spellings & scripts●

BabuLatin · Hindi●2.3M records
БабуCyrillic · Mongolian●6 records
বাবBengali · Bangla●5 records

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

Kiswahili: 'grandfather'; also a West African male name meaning 'willing'

Sources 1

  • African Names

Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Babu is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India#1082,888,9341.6M rec.—42KBabu260
PK Pakistan#5217,60562 rec.—listedBabu22
BD Bangladesh#4475,00612K rec.—listedBabu95
SA Saudi Arabia#3003,6471.8K rec.——Babu40
GB United Kingdom—3,2603.2K rec.—listedBabu98
MY Malaysia—2,5332.2K rec.——Babu27
AU Australia—2,1653.9K rec.——Babu98
AE United Arab Emirates#2131,7344K rec.——Babu90
SG Singapore#4511,2073.3K rec.——Babu61
QA Qatar#1361,1562.8K rec.——Babu34
US United States—1,08938K rec.1 in 305K13KBabu249
ID Indonesia—5041.3K rec.——Babu40

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

Languages●

  • Hindi2.3M69%
  • 746K22%
  • Bangla74K2%
  • English45K1%
  • Vietnamese32K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Hindi2,341,75769%
745,55122%
Bangla74,3242%
English45,2641%
Vietnamese31,7631%

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◐

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

  • a separate given name1.2M records spelled Babu5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Pakistan, United States, Ethiopia

    Also written Bābu, Babū, Bābū, Băbu

  • Swahili given name29K records spelled Babu5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Kenya, Tanzania

    Languages: Swahili, Southern Sotho

    Also written Bäbü

  • Spanish given name15K records spelled Babu21 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Spain, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Babú, Babù, Båbů, Bãbü, Bábú

  • French given name6.1K records spelled Babu4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, India, United States, Spain

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Babû, Bäbü

  • Thai given name4.1K records spelled Babu32 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, India, Laos, United States

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written Babi, Barbie, บาบู, Baboo, บาบ

  • Finnish given name2.9K records spelled Babu5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Finland, Hungary, United States

    Languages: Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian

    Also written Bãbű, Båbú

59 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●

Babu 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.

  • Willing

    as a nameThe book of African names

  • A doctor

    as a nameThe book of African names

  • In Swahili, grandfather

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

  • A healer.

    as a nameThe African book of names

  • Ancestor.

    as a nameThe African book of names

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●

05K10K15K20K19001920194019601980200016K · 1984

Show as table
Babu in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1899–2017
Yearrecords
189913
19001
19013
19071
19101
19121
19134
191410
19154
191621
191726
191845
191941
192095
192144
192286
1923213
1924171
1925132
1926138
1927174
1928197
1929412
1930256
1931380
1932666
1933520
1934971
1935683
1936830
19371,082
19381,154
19391,551
19401,380
19411,602
19422,450
19432,066
19443,066
19452,390
19462,984
19473,305
19483,204
19494,078
19503,241
19514,055
19525,051
19533,923
19545,809
19554,566
19565,569
19575,827
19586,134
19597,491
19606,197
19617,132
19628,222
19637,152
19648,381
19657,318
19668,869
19678,160
19687,952
19698,565
19708,700
19719,307
19729,984
19739,580
19749,142
19759,439
197611,400
197710,201
197810,592
197910,641
19809,919
198112,682
198215,698
198316,211
198416,257
198515,405
198612,316
198714,896
198812,994
198912,608
199012,917
199113,855
199214,327
199315,238
199413,141
199510,919
19966,521
19976,176
19983,901
1999500
200020
200110
20029
20032
20051
20078
20081,306
20093
2010604
201178
201277
2013153
20142,734
2015522
20163
20171

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 109 years between 1899–2017. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

  • Babu Gulabraib. 1888INIndian Hindi philosopher and essayist (1888–1963)
  • Nagoor Babub. 1963INIndian playback singer aka Mano

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 46 sources across 24 countries.

Official registers attesting Babu
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—71K#11
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—42K#357
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)198416K—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)198316K—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)198216K—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)198515K—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)199315K—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)198715K—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)199214K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202.3K#12,661
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.5K#18,478
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20201.1K#11,596

Reference works 6

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname 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 · 304 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Babu?
We estimate roughly 1.4 thousand people bear Babu (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
In which country does Babu have the most bearers?
Babu is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled babu.
How common is Babu compared with other names?
In India, Babu is the 108th most common given name of 4,777,337 given names recorded there.
Is Babu a male or female name?
Babu 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 Babu mean?
Recorded meaning: Kiswahili: 'grandfather'; also a West African male name meaning 'willing'
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/babu

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, “Babu” — the 108th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Babu parses inside a full name →