Bouba
given name · French · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Bouba is a given name, most frequently recorded in France. In Cameroon it is the 76th most common given name. It appears chiefly in French and Arabic, written in the Latin script.
- CMCameroon1 in 1.7K◐
- FRFrance1 in 127K
- BFBurkina Faso1 in 2.8K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈138 ●
- Sources
- 124 ●
- 1 in 397K ◐
across 2 countries
10K records
Official registry-verified
Spain
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | — | 4,163 | 5.4K rec. | — | 13 | Bouba | 124 |
| CM Cameroon | #76 | 1,180 | 2.8K rec. | — | 1 | Bouba | 25 |
| US United States | — | 311 | 426 rec. | — | — | Bouba | 45 |
| SN Senegal | #200 | 197 | 149 rec. | — | 3 | Bouba | 23 |
| DZ Algeria | — | 138 | 228 rec. | — | — | Bouba | 8 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | 137 | 145 rec. | — | — | Bouba | 11 |
| ES Spain | — | 126 | 130 rec. | 1 in 397K | 126 | Bouba | 18 |
| ML Mali | #79 | 123 | 122 rec. | — | 1 | Bouba | 19 |
| BF Burkina Faso | #248 | 123 | 124 rec. | — | — | Bouba | 13 |
| IT Italy | — | 123 | 146 rec. | — | — | Bouba | 6 |
| DE Germany | — | 49 | 81 rec. | — | — | Bouba | 16 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 18 | 46 rec. | — | — | Bouba | 5 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- French6.3K76%
- Arabic3284%
- Spanish2833%
- English2193%
- German1522%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| French | 6,316 | 76% |
| Arabic | 328 | 4% |
| Spanish | 283 | 3% |
| English | 219 | 3% |
| German | 152 | 2% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Bouba is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Galician, lie, fib
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Portuguese, yaws
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●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1891 | 2 |
| 1901 | 1 |
| 1911 | 1 |
| 1921 | 4 |
| 1941 | 6 |
| 1951 | 8 |
| 1961 | 5 |
| 1971 | 9 |
| 1981 | 15 |
| 1991 | 13 |
FR INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) — 10 years between 1891–1991. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Bouba Landrille Tchoudab. 1975CMCameroonian choreographer
- Papa Bouba Diopb. 1978SNSenegalese footballer (1978–2020)
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 15 sources across 11 countries.
Reference works 2
- 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 2026-09-12 data build · 26 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Bouba?
- We estimate roughly 138 people bear Bouba (counting its spellings and scripts) across 2 countries in our records.
- In which country does Bouba have the most bearers?
- Bouba is most frequently recorded in France, where it is most often spelled bouba.
- How common is Bouba compared with other names?
- In Cameroon, Bouba is the 76th most common given name of 9,502 given names recorded there.
- Is Bouba a male or female name?
- Bouba 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.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/boubaThe 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
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, “Bouba” — the 76th most common given name in Cameroon. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.