Bar

loc · English · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Bar is a name, most frequently recorded in Indonesia. It appears chiefly in English and Arabic, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: probably to ahd. bar 'man'; hard to separate from BÄR.

rarermore common
  • IDIndonesia1 in 987
  • ZASouth Africa1 in 2.8K
  • TRTürkiye1 in 3.1K

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

≈65K

across 14 countries

5

recorded for this name

Sources
323

426K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 3.3K

Switzerland

Spellings & scripts

BaruLatin · Indonesian105K records
বরBengali · Bangla4.4K records
ବିରOdia · Odia52 records
เบอะThai · Thai25 records
ప్రTelugu · Telugu0 records

7 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Beer in US United States, ZA South Africa, GB United Kingdom and 7 more, Bir in SY Syria, DZ Algeria, MA Morocco and 1 more, Baru in ID Indonesia, VN Vietnam and Bor in TR Türkiye, PL Poland.

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

probably to ahd. bar 'man'; hard to separate from BÄR

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 27 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

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

Where Bar is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ID Indonesia105,054447 rec.listedBaru71
TR Türkiye44,64716K rec.Bor48
IN India41,715310K rec.1 in 32K42KBari127
ZA South Africa#21910,87811K rec.Beer99
GB United Kingdom9,4608.8K rec.7Beer169
US United States8,25257K rec.1 in 40K9KBeer323
AU Australia7,9028.1K rec.2Beer142
BR Brazil3,0599 rec.1 in 69K3.1K4
CH Switzerland2,572346 rec.1 in 3.3K2.6KBeer50
AR Argentina2,3781 rec.1 in 19K2.4K2
ES Spain2,328341 rec.1 in 21K15KBru30
CA Canada2,1112.5K rec.5Beer94

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

Languages

  • English470K47%
  • Arabic104K11%
  • French12K1%
  • Hindi11K1%
  • English (Uganda)3.7K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English469,97447%
Arabic104,18011%
French12,2421%
Hindi11,3601%
English (Uganda)3,6871%

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

Bar is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname40K records spelled Bar14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia

    Languages: English, German

    Also written Bär, Bâr, Bãr, Bář

  • a separate surname37K records spelled Bar8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Switzerland

    Also written Bär, Bār, Bár, Băr, Bår

  • Polish name11K records spelled Bar5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United Kingdom

    Also written Bär, Bár

  • Hebrew surname11K records spelled Bar40 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Israel, United States, Egypt, Lebanon

    Languages: Hebrew, Arabic

    Also written באר, בר, ביר, בהר, Barr

66 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

Bar 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.

  • In English, A solid, more or less rigid object of metal or wood with a uniform cross-section smaller than its length.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Italian, Variante di Bardo, dal germanico, «forte, audace».

    as a nameDizionario Dei Nomi e Cognomi Italiani

  • Rabat, Bordeaux, Israel, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

  • In German, Aramaic bar 'son'; common name element

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • In German, Aramaic element meaning 'son of'

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

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

0102030401920194019601980200034 · 1974

Show as table
Bar in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1918–2015
Yearrecords
19182
19223
19233
19245
19252
19262
19271
19284
19296
19305
19311
193210
19332
193411
19354
19366
19376
19384
19398
19406
19414
194217
19437
194414
19455
194610
194714
194811
194913
19508
195113
195223
195311
195421
195520
195616
195722
195824
195912
196026
196114
196215
19639
196413
196519
196614
196712
196818
196919
197018
197115
197217
197322
197434
197518
197620
197711
197813
197916
198013
198118
198219
198315
198419
198515
198612
198717
198813
198916
19908
19916
19925
19938
199415
19959
19967
19973
19982
20082
20101
20111
20123
20133
20143
20151

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)85 years between 1918–2015. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name

19201940196019802000Jacques Bar, b. 1921Luis Barboo, b. 1927Zvi Bar, b. 1935Moshe Bar-Asher, b. 1939Hanania Baer, b. 1943Ronen Bar, b. 1965Noma Bar, b. 1973Sendi Bar, b. 1976Bar Paly, b. 1982Bar Refaeli, b. 1985

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 45 sources across 25 countries.

Official registers attesting Bar
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls1.6K#3,662
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20261.3K
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)1.3K#2,198
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.2K#21,564
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20261.2K
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)1.2K#2,475
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010999#24,890
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)775#11,553
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000759#29,359
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)452
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1951383
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)2008378#4,188

Reference works 6

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 245 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Bar?
We estimate roughly 65 thousand people bear Bar (counting its spellings and scripts) across 14 countries in our records.
In which country does Bar have the most bearers?
Bar is most frequently recorded in Indonesia, where it is most often spelled baru.
How common is Bar compared with other names?
In South Africa, Bar is the 219th most common surname of 302,267 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Bar mean?
Recorded meaning: probably to ahd. bar 'man'; hard to separate from BÄR
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bar

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, “Bar” — the 219th most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Bar parses inside a full name →