Dube

surname · English · Latin script

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

Dube is a surname, most frequently recorded in Zimbabwe, where it is the 4th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Hindi, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: unexplained and apparently obsolete.

rarermore common
  • ZWZimbabwe1 in 10◐
  • ZASouth Africa1 in 872
  • CACanada1 in 3.6K

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

≈112K ●

across 11 countries

#831 ●

of 21M surnames

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
348 ●

305K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 13K ◐

India

Spellings & scripts●

DubeLatin · English●896K records
ดูเบThai · Thai●299 records

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Dubay in RU Russia, IE Ireland, CN China and ดูเบย์ in TH Thailand.

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●

unexplained and apparently obsolete.

Sources 1

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Dube is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ZW Zimbabwe#4773,228267 rec.—258KDube53
IN India#392101,852135K rec.1 in 13K102KDube129
ZA South Africa#3934,59534K rec.—listedDube98
CA Canada#25420,92718K rec.——Dube140
GB United Kingdom—13,32111K rec.——Dube114
US United States—9,13691K rec.1 in 36K9.1KDube348
AU Australia—3,2093K rec.——Dube78
DE Germany—2,2982.2K rec.——Dube74
TH Thailand—1,528733 rec.—#197,868ดูเบย์58
CH Switzerland—523△34 rec.1 in 16K523Dube8
IL Israel—482540 rec.——Dube4
IT Italy—450472 rec.—1Dube9

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

Languages●

  • English896K60%
  • Hindi456K31%
  • 54K4%
  • French19K1%
  • Swahili8.6K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English895,94960%
Hindi455,67931%
54,2534%
French18,7071%
Swahili8,6041%

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◐

Dube is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate surname56K records spelled Dube5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Ethiopia, Canada

    Also written Dubé, Dubè, Dūbe, Dübe

  • Spanish surname8.3K records spelled Dube8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, South Africa, Argentina, Spain

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Dubé, Dubè, Dubë, Dube'

  • English (South Africa) surname5.7K records spelled Dube2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in South Africa, United Kingdom, Zimbabwe, United States

    Also written Dubé

  • Amharic surname1.5K records spelled Dube6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, South Africa, Ethiopia, United States

    Also written Duba, ዱቤ, ዱበ, Dubee, Dubé

  • Norwegian surname571 records spelled Dube9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, South Africa, Denmark, India

    Languages: Norwegian, Danish, Swedish

    Also written Dübe, Dubé

35 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●

Dube 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 Zulu, Zulu clan name; izithakazelo associated with the zebra.

    as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames

  • In Serbo-Croatian, third-person plural present of dubiti

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

  • In Slovak, locative singular of dub

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

  • In Czech, vocative singular of dub

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

  • In kpg, land crab

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

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●

020040060080019201940196019802000745 · 1975

Show as table
Dube in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1918–2017
Yearrecords
191817
19196
19203
19214
19225
192310
192410
192514
192612
192711
192826
192914
193028
193117
193223
193340
193433
193556
193634
193739
193878
193952
194078
194172
194296
1943120
194486
1945128
1946112
1947121
1948226
1949168
1950198
1951169
1952163
1953275
1954194
1955309
1956216
1957228
1958406
1959272
1960343
1961345
1962361
1963420
1964386
1965532
1966349
1967412
1968599
1969477
1970632
1971517
1972671
1973571
1974665
1975745
1976543
1977576
1978634
1979622
1980676
1981604
1982635
1983577
1984590
1985563
1986667
1987614
1988561
1989628
1990579
1991505
1992404
1993523
1994449
1995361
1996259
1997243
199871
19992
20085
200913
201026
2011101
201269
2013161
201456
2015139
20172

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 91 years between 1918–2017. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1850190019502000John Langalibalele Dube, b. 1871Wolf-Dieter Dube, b. 1934Joseph Dube, b. 1944Lillian Dube, b. 1945Anita Dube, b. 1958Opha Pauline Dube, b. 1960Lucky Dube, b. 1964Danielle Dube, b. 1976Serge Dube, b. 1979Mkhokheli Dube, b. 1983

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 39 sources across 27 countries.

Official registers attesting Dube
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ZW ZimbabweThis page provides an overview of common surnames in Zimbabwe, published on surnam.es.2026258K#4
ZW ZimbabweThis page provides a list of the most common surnames in Zimbabwe.2023256K#4
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—102K#178
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—52K#108
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020109.1K#3,881
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020208.7K#3,945
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020008.5K#3,845
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1975745—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1975684—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1980676—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1972671—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1986667—

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (Tom II: C-D)
  • 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 · 270 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Dube?
We estimate roughly 112 thousand people bear Dube (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Dube have the most bearers?
Dube is most frequently recorded in Zimbabwe, where it is most often spelled dube.
How common is Dube compared with other names?
In Zimbabwe, Dube is the 4th most common surname of 8,027 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Dube mean?
Recorded meaning: unexplained and apparently obsolete.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/dube

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, “Dube” — the 4th most common surname in Zimbabwe. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Dube parses inside a full name →