Boubou

given name · French · Latin script

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

Boubou is a given name, with more bearers in France than in any other country. In Mauritania it is the 17th most common given name. It appears chiefly in French and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: boubou (African robe).

rarermore common
  • FRFrance1 in 112K◐
  • SNSenegal1 in 3K
  • MLMali1 in 3.4K

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

≈823 ●

across 2 countries

Sources
145 ●

15K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 112K ◐

France

Meaning & origin●

boubou (African robe)

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world●

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

Where Boubou is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FR France—60512K rec.1 in 112K605Boubou145
US United States—294368 rec.——Boubou44
ML Mali#47275280 rec.—1Boubou21
SN Senegal#18122775 rec.—3Boubou17
ES Spain—218△84 rec.1 in 229K218Boubou20
DZ Algeria—161335 rec.—listedBoubou10
MR Mauritania#1799109 rec.——Boubou9
MA Morocco—57161 rec.——Boubou16
BE Belgium—51158 rec.—12Boubou16
IT Italy—5061 rec.——Boubou3
DE Germany—3371 rec.—listedBoubou16
TN Tunisia—960 rec.——Boubou4

Roughly 605 people in France bear this name (about 1 in 112K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

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

Languages●

  • French10K86%
  • Spanish5785%
  • Arabic2202%
  • Catalan2182%
  • English1882%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
French10,43886%
Spanish5785%
Arabic2202%
Catalan2182%
English1882%

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◐

Boubou is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name1.2K records spelled Boubou3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, Argentina, United States, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Boùboù

  • Arabic given name845 records spelled Boubou16 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Romania

    Also written Boùboù, Bôubôu, Bôùbôù, Bôübôū, Böübõü

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●

Boubou 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.

  • In English, bird

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, A flowing wide-sleeved robe worn by men in much of West Africa, and to a lesser extent in North Africa.

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

  • In Breton, murmure; frou-frou

    as a wordDeshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)

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●

0102030401900192019401960198034 · 1981

Show as table
Boubou in INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000), France, 1891–1991
Yearrecords
18919
190113
19113
19217
19318
19415
195111
196116
197111
198134
199112

FR INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) — 11 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●

190019201940196019802000Boubou Hama, b. 1906Boubou Cisse, b. 1974Jimmy Kébé, b. 1984Boubou Ndiaye, b. 1985
  • Boubou Hamab. 1906NENigerien author, historian, and politician (1906-1982)
  • Boubou Cisseb. 1974MLMalian politician
  • Jimmy Kébéb. 1984FRnot in their usual nameMalian-French footballer (born 1984)
  • Boubou Ndiayeb. 1985MRMauritanian association football player

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 17 sources across 11 countries.

Official registers attesting Boubou
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2024605#1,521
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—218#8,447
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—174#4,646
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—71#35,149
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—71#34,849
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)198134—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)196116—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)190113—
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)200812#63,685
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)199112—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)197111—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)195111—

Reference works 3

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 · 28 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Boubou?
We estimate roughly 823 people bear Boubou (counting its spellings and scripts) across 2 countries in our records.
In which country does Boubou have the most bearers?
We estimate about 605 people bear Boubou in France, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled boubou.
How common is Boubou compared with other names?
In Mauritania, Boubou is the 17th most common given name of 559 given names recorded there.
Is Boubou a male or female name?
Boubou 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 Boubou mean?
Recorded meaning: boubou (African robe)
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/boubou

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, “Boubou” — the 17th most common given name in Mauritania. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Boubou parses inside a full name →